The problem of pollution may have found a possible solution. Marine microbiologists have discovered an organism that lives in waste plastic. With the literal tons of plastic waste floating in the ocean, this could be key to finding a way to biodegrade plastic.
Taking samples of waste plastic from the northern Atlantic ocean and using electron microscopy, the primitive organism was found to live in the plastic. It also appears to be feeding on it as well, and nothing else – it is nowhere to be found in the surrounding seawater or seaweed. Tracy Mincer of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution describes the creature as follows:
They look like you took a hot barbecue briquette and threw it into snow. You see this melting bit all around the outside of the cells, and they’re just burrowing into the plastic.
It is unsure as yet if this is a good or a bad thing – but if the digestive by-products prove to be environmentally friendly then this could be a phenomenal display of nature fighting back against all the plastic we’ve been throwing at it. There is still the possibility that the organism is merely absorbing the toxins contained in the plastic, and passing these toxins on to those higher along the food chain.
Large “trash islands” have been forming in the oceans where currents converge, and this could be the key to solving this problem.
[Source: RT]
