Originally posted by DeepThought
By which I mean that the caterpillar, Galleria mellonella, eats the plastic not that they've invented a new plastic monster that eats small insects. The article [1] says that the researchers want to understand the process to break down used plastics. Given the problem of plastic in the marine environment, see eg. [2], this could be quite importa ...[text shortened]... uk/news/science-environment-39694553
[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37926733
They come up with something like this every year. It seems scientists (or science news reporters) don't read the news.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110328/full/news.2011.191.html
2011
Microbes have been found digesting plastic in landfills, he says, but this is the first evidence of marine bacteria breaking down plastic in the ocean.
https://www.seeker.com/plastic-eating-microbes-help-marine-debris-sink-1768721094.html
2014
The study is the first to document the biological communities living on the tiny particles of debris known as microplastics, and recorded many new types of microbe and invertebrate for the first time.
"I am excited about this because the 'plastic-eating' microbes could provide solutions for better waste disposal practices on land."
https://phys.org/news/2016-03-newly-bacteria-plastic-bottles.html
2016
Previous studies had found a few species of fungi can grow on PET, but until now, no one had found any microbes that can eat it.
OK that last one is a particular type of plastic, so maybe the previous ones were for other types.
Certainly finding the right microbes, breeding them up and distributing them would be a great idea, but at the same time, better waste disposal and recycling is critical too. In this day and age, who is still chucking their plastic bags in the sea? Some serious fines are in order.