The increasing amount of plastic being added to our environments has created intense selection pressure for microbes that can break down plastic for energy.
Looking at environmental DNA samples, researchers have found 30,000 different enzymes capable of digesting different types of plastic. Almost 60% did not fit into any known enzyme types.
While previous plastic-eating microbes had primarily been found in garbage dumps or recycling plants (locations with very high levels of plastic), the enzymes in this study were collected from soil and ocean water throughout the world, meaning this phenomenon is even more widespread than we thought.
Thanks to the anonymous individual who sent this in!
I see a lot of people commenting along the lines of “I thought they meant bugs as in insects and I imagined beetles eating plastic, this is kinda disappointing”.
Don’t worry–there are insects that eat plastic too!
Superworms and Mealworms (darkling beetle larvae):
Waxworms (wax moth caterpillars):
There are quite possibly more out there that we don’t even know about–it’s likely we only noticed that the insects above could eat plastic because they are all commonly cultured by humans.
