A polyethylene-eating caterpillar has been discovered by a team of researchers who see in it a hope for cleaning up the environment.
Will the “wax moth larva” save our polluted oceans and clean up our degraded planet? Better to be careful, but the discovery of this species offers hope. Researchers have indeed discovered the existence of a caterpillar capable of devouring polyethylene, one of the most resistant and polluting plastics, used in a large number of packaging. Their work has been published in the journal Current Biology.
This larva, which is commercially bred in large numbers, is used as bait for fishing. In the wild, it constitutes a danger for the bees of Europe. Indeed, it is a parasite of beehives that nestles in beeswax.
Holes in the plastic
A Spanish researcher, herself a beekeeper in her spare time, discovered the virtues of this larva (Galleria mellonella) by noting the damage to her own bees. She observed that the plastic bags in which she placed the wax from the beehives infected by this parasite were quickly riddled with holes.
Holes began to appear after only forty minutes. At the end of twelve hours, the plastic mass of the bag was reduced by 92 milligrams – an “extremely rapid” rate of degradation, compared to other recent discoveries such as that of a bacteria, last year, which can also degrade some. plastics but at the rate of only 0.13 milligrams per day.
90 million tonnes to devour
The authors of the latest discovery believe that the wax moth larva not only ingests plastic, but chemically transforms or breaks it with a substance produced by its salivary glands.
Every year, more than 90 million tonnes of plastic packaging is dumped in nature around the world. It takes about a century for these plastic bags to decompose completely, and 400 years for the most resistant. Currently, the process of chemical degradation of this plastic waste Caterpillars will not save the planet, but they could offer it a precious help …
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