BIO-DEGRADATION OF PLASTICby Yvonne Wabai | 15-05-2017 01:00 |
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Humanity, as of now, is highly dependent upon plastics. They are most widely used for packaging, and we use them for packaging close to everything. They also have other uses other than packaging, such as making textiles, making car parts, and making medical equipment, among others. They're cheap, easy to make, durable, flexible, and malleable, which gives them a wide array of applications in close to all sectors of the economy. The only problem with plastics is that they're nonbiodegradable, which leaves us with a huge pollution problem on our hands. Plastic production increases every year and, consequently, so does plastic waste. You can get the current statistics on plastic pollution here. EFFECTS OF PLASTIC POLLUTION The effects of plastic pollution are many. Animals, especially marine animals, are dying due to entanglement and chocking on plastics dumped in the water. Humans are contracting hormone-related diseases at a higher rate than before due to consuming plastics with their food. Plastic waste is taking up more and more space and soon we'll all be surrounded by plastic debris. Combustion of plastics contributes to global warming. With these, and many other effects of plastic solution, it is no wonder that people are trying to do away with plastics. People are now shifting, especially in packaging, to biodegradable items that can replace plastics - or rather, that were replaced by plastics e.g. leaf plates. The problem with this shift, however, is that it is too slow, and it is not adequate in itself because plastics are rather versatile and there is no known compound yet to be as versatile and therefore not all uses of plastics will be phased out meaning more plastic will continue to be produced. But what if we could make plastic biodegradable? BIODEGRADATION OF PLASTIC Scientists have been fiddling around with the concept of biodegrading plastics for ages now. Last year, I wrote about a bacteria that was discovered to biodegrade plastics. The bacteria was discovered to be rather efficient on the job and there have been lans to make it into a large-scale operation. Today, however, I bring to you worms that can biodegrade plastics. These worms are mealworms and wax worms. MEALWORMS Mealworms are the larval form of the mealworn beetle. In 2015, groundbreaking research from Stanford University and China's Beihang University has shown that mealsworms can safely and effectively biodegrade styrofoam and other forms of polystyrene. In the studies, the worms were fed on plastics and their guts digested it to produce tiny rabbit droppings that researcers believe could be safely repurposed in agriculture. The worms that were fed on plastics were found to be as healthy as those that weren't fed on plastics. Research on this is still ongoing and scientists are quite hopeful. The research is aimed at finding out how many other plastics the mealworms can biodegrade and at finding ways to deploy the worms into plastic waste sites. WAXWORMS Wax worms are the caterpillar larvae of wax moths. The discovery that wax moths could biodegrade plastics was rather accidental as amateur scientist and beekeper, Federica Bertocchini, picked parasitic wax woms from her honeycombs and placed them in plastic bags, only to return and find the bags with holes and several worms missing. Following this discovery, Frederica collaborated with scientists at the University of Cambridge, England, to find out how efficient the wax worms could be in plastic biodegradation. The team discovered the wax worm, a caterpillar commercially bred for fishing bait, has the ability to biodegrade polyethylene at uniquely high speeds. The degradation rate was extremely fast compared to other discoveries, like plastic-eating bacteria, the study published in Current Biology found. The worms were found to actually breakdown the polymer chains in polyethylene. Further research is ongoing. REFERENCES 1. Wikipedia. 2. ABC News |
