Plastics are a serious problem worldwide. We generate so many tons of plastic per day around the world that we cannot even quantify it well. Most of the plastic in the world is not recycled or reused, so it becomes a problematic waste, since its degradation is almost nil. The life of plastics is thousands of years to degrade.
Well, in the face of this problem of such a large amount of plastic waste generation, we have to find a viable solution that is as ecological as possible. To our surprise, scientists have discovered that a species of caterpillar that has normally been bred to serve as bait in fishing, it is capable of biologically degrading the polyethylene contained in plastics. Can we use caterpillars to degrade the plastic?
Plastic-eating worm
Millions of tons of plastics are generated in the world every day and it is a large part of them that we use in shopping bags and others. This plastic is made of polyethylene. The caterpillars we are talking about are wax worms (in their scientific name Galleria melonella) usually lives in bee hives as a parasite. The moths lay their eggs inside the hives to take advantage of the protection against environmental agents and other predators, and the worms develop in the beeswax.
Thanks to different beekeeping studies, this fact has been discovered. Like many things in science, they are discovered by chance or by looking for another explanation. In this case, Federica Bertocchini, an amateur beekeeper, discovered that, after cleaning her combs, she introduced part of the wax worms that she found in plastic bags. After a while he saw that the bags in which he had deposited the worms they had a multitude of holes.
Biodegradation experiments
Once this was discovered, the experiments began. And it is that finding a living being that biologically degrades plastic can be all a help to fight with this abundant waste. The experiments carried out were to place around a hundred worms in a plastic bag and observe what they did. After about forty minutes, holes began to appear in the bag. After 12 hours a fifth of the mass of the bag had disappeared.
Thanks to this, scientists have been able to affirm that these wax worms have been shown to have the highest rate of plastic biodegradation ever discovered so far. Other bacteria that use plastic as food have also been discovered, but not at this rate of biodegradation, since it took the bacteria to eliminate 0,13 mg of plastic in 24 hours. In this case, we are talking about the worms they could remove 1.8 grams of plastic in 24 hours.
Utilities of this finding
Scientists are beginning to think about what to do with this discovery as it could be a good help in the fight against plastics in landfills and oceans. The method they would use to promote this would be to reproduce on a large scale the enzyme that is responsible for the degradation of plastic.
We are talking about the fact that the polyethylene in plastic bags correspond 40% of plastic consumption throughout Spain, Of which in the world we do not even speak: around a trillion plastic bags are consumed each year. That is why if this enzyme that degrades plastic is reproduced on a large scale, it could alleviate some problems of plastic waste.
The explanation that scientists have given to the fact that worms can degrade plastic is that beeswax are polymers with structures similar to those of polyethylene. With this discovery we will try to find a viable way to get rid of all the plastic waste in the world.
As you can see, nature can once again clean itself with its own methods and, in this case, it can also decontaminate all those places that are full of plastics.