Cleaning Up Plastics with Microbial Help

Microplastics and nanoplastics are literally everywhere and yet, we continue to produce 300 million tons of plastic every year and by 2060, that number will triple. Much of this is from single-use items like food packaging. Up to 70 percent of plastics end up in landfills, the oceans, or randomly discarded into the environment where they degrade.  Because they’re made of fossil fuels, the chemicals within them are released when they break down.  

Microplastics are pieces of plastic that are under 5 millimeters and nanoplastics are even smaller, the size of a single bacterium.   Both are found worldwide in the most remote places, on the highest mountains, and deepest parts of our oceans.   They’re also in our food chain and our bodies – the lung, blood, breast milk, sperm and placental tissue.  There’s building evidence that they’re harmful, but we’re mostly unaware of the extent.  

Much of our plastic waste ends up in the world’s oceans and the most recognized is the so-called Pacific Trash vortex. It’s larger than the state of Alaska.    

New research at the garbage patch has focused on using microbes to break down the plastic. A new study identified a fungus called Parengyodontium album found in the patch's microbial communities. It feasts on polyethylene plastics that have been altered and degraded by exposure to ultraviolet light. Three other fungi have also been found to decompose plastic. They could be one key piece to solving this plastic crisis.