Plastic waste is a huge problem for our planet and, despite the efforts of many scientists to create viable alternatives for packaging and other uses, it is not going away overnight.
We produce 440 million tons of plastic waste every year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, with much of it ending up in the oceans where it poses an immediate threat to marine life.
But researchers at Michigan Technological University may have discovered one way to solve two problems at once — by turning plastic into food, as Undark reported.
The idea behind the project, developed with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is not to have people eat plastic, but rather to turn microbes that can break down plastic into food. If we were to compare it to things that people currently eat, think of the microbes as a yummy hamburger and the plastic as feed for cows. Or, perhaps, the microbes themselves could become feed for something else humans eat.
The scientists behind the project are well aware of how far-fetched their work sounds, at present, and the hangups that many people might have when it comes to chowing down on some plastic-devouring microbes.
Stephen Techtmann, a microbiologist at Michigan Technological University who is leading the research, referred to an "ick factor" that he recognized would need to be overcome.
There is also the question, as of yet not fully answered, of whether or not these microbes will be safe for human consumption, particularly when it comes to leftover microplastics and nanoplastics. It sounds a bit too good to be true, so there would be a big onus for researchers to make sure it isn't in any way.
"We're pretty sure there's nothing bad in there," said Joshua Pearce, an electrical engineer at Western University in Ontario, Canada, who performed a toxicology screening on the microbes.
Still, the new technology is highly intriguing because it could solve two problems at the same time — allowing us to break down plastic that would otherwise exist in the environment basically forever, while also providing a potentially much-needed food source. Techtmann pointed out that it could be used in extreme survival situations, such as during remote military operations or during disaster relief.
Other similar efforts to more effectively break down plastic waste (without generating a food source simultaneously) are underway around the world. At the University of New South Wales, scientists have developed a method of breaking down the plastic that constitutes Styrofoam into reusable raw materials using a simple chemical compound combined with sunlight and air.
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