Microbes That Can Eat Plastic.

Plastic here in Thurles, Co. Tipperary; as with every other town in the world, is ubiquitous. It fills our bins, shopping trolleys and households.

It’s hard to imagine life without plastic and yet it’s a relatively recent invention. It wasn’t until the 1960s that plastic began to be mass produced and many of our readers may well remember how life in Ireland functioned before plastic.

Despite its usefulness and convenience, plastic is one of our world’s greatest environmental problems. It now dominates our landfills, rivers and oceans.

Why?

It does not decompose like other materials. Indeed, it is estimated that it can take 450 years for one plastic bottle to decompose in landfill.

In the fascinating “TedEd” talk in the video shown immediately above, [which hopefully you have all watched], scientific research on microbes may help humanity find an effective and more natural way to decompose plastic in our environment.

Whilst this is indeed welcome news, it represents only a small step in the fight against plastic. Ultimately, we need to drastically rethink our relationship with the substance and aim to remove as much plastic as we can from our lives and communities.

As the wise old adage states, “prevention is better than cure”.