Microbes are evolving to deal with the plastic that we're leaving everywhere. Scientists narrowed down about 30,000 sort of candidate enzymes. They think they could have good activity against 10 different kinds of plastic. The first thing you want to do is reduce the use of them where you can. And a simple example of that is single bags for life at the supermarket.
Plastic pollution is damaging the health of the environment, wildlife and us. It has been found on remote islands, in Antarctic snow and in human blood, breast milk and lungs. Alongside rapidly reducing how much plastic we produce, we also need to find new ways to tackle the waste we have created. Madeleine Finlay speaks to the Guardian’s environment editor, Damian Carrington, about the discovery of an enzyme that can rapidly break down plastic bags – found inside the saliva of wax worms – and where else we might find solutions in the natural world. Help support our independent journalism at
theguardian.com/sciencepod