Find creatures that help destroy plastic waste fastest

Works by Stanford University engineering group (USA) combined research group of Tsinghua University (China) has just been published in the scientific journal of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

The plastics manufacturing industry has grown three times in the last 25 years, leaving the corresponding consequences severely.

Mealworm digests the plastic sponge very well in wheat bran conditions - (Photo: ANJA BRADON)

Besides recycling, scientists try to find biological methods to treat garbage, or find animals that can digest plastic. Some of the detected fungal or bacterial species may "take on" this responsibility, but the process is quite slow.

After three years of hard work, graduate student Anja Brandon at Stanford and instructor Professor Craig Criddle found that the bacteria in the rice gut have the ability to break down the polymer many times faster.

, also known as bunkers (there are three varieties with three different large and small sizes: superworm, mealworm, miniworm) known as bird food, fast reproduction.

Previously, several studies have shown that rice worms digest only some thermoplastics (polystyrene).

Two Brandon teachers set questions and began to test rice worms on polyethylene (now popular plastic), in addition to establishing control groups of wheat bran to increase digestive efficiency and group only. eat bran.

Plastic waste flooded many places - (Photo: REUTERS).

After 32 days of experiment, more than 90% of the worm survived, consumed 0.87gram of plastic (on the original 1.8gram). Meanwhile, the group that ate polystyrene plastic only consumed 0.57grams.

The bran-plastic group was superior when devouring 1.1gram of polyethylene and 0.98 grams of polystyrene. Chemical reactions in the deep intestine of rice have converted about 50% of plastic into CO2. The fertilizer of rice worms was assessed by the research team as safe for soil.

At the end of the experiment, the team studied rice deep surgery and found differences in the intestinal microbiota between the control groups. The group hypothesized that the rice worm had altered the intestinal microbiota to match the abnormal diet.

Currently, scientists argue that the non-exclusive worm of rice digests the flexible nature of the intestinal microflora that allows them to specialize with some substances quite quickly.

The team estimated a thousand populations of rice worms could consume about 0.3 grams of plastic a day, although not as fast as lightning but still more than waiting for decomposing plastic under the landfill.