Your Plastic Can be Food? For Bacteria at Least!

Plastic waste has been a really huge problem within the last couple decades, building up more and more in our environment. This has been affecting the animals, plants, and microorganisms that inhabit our world. 12 million metric tons enter our oceans every year! Naturally this has drove scientific research into how to reduce plastic waste.

Ideonella Sakaiensis

Scientists at first started with modifying the bacteria E. Coli since this was readily available and extremely common, but this bacteria prefers to break down sugars, and would digest the plastic very slowly. In 2016 scientists located in Sakai Japan found a bacteria that was naturally breaking down the plastic by itself in a plastic water bottle recycling plant. This bacteria was known as Ideonella Sakaiensis which is a gram negative, rod shaped bacteria. The scientists believed it naturally evolved to begin digesting the plastic, because so much of it entered its enviroment. The major type of plastic Ideonella Sakaiensis will digest is polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is the common plastic used to make disposable water bottles.

Monomer

Plastic is made up of long monomer chains that naturally line up with other monomer chains to create Polyethylene terephthalate. The bonds between the monomer chains are very strong which is what gives plastic its durability. This also is what makes it difficult for organisms to digest, since only the bonds between monomer chains can be broken, and not the actual bonds between monomers. Ideonella sakaiensis is able to break the bonds between monomers which is what makes it so special.

You may be wondering now, why don't we just grow a bunch of this bacteria and put it into every landfill, and let the bacteria have the feast?The rate at which we as humans produce plastic waste is much higher than the rate at which the plastic will be destroyed by this bacteria, and additionally the bacteria needs to be kept above 30 degrees Celsius.

There is a new type of hope however, scientists in 2018 began research on a type of grub which is also able to digest plastic at a faster rate. However its the type of plastic that makes up bubble wrap and plastic bags rather than plastic bottles.