SCIENCE: Can This Worm Eat Us Out of Our Plastic Mess?
Each year, the world produces 300 million tons of plastic, much of which resists degradation and ends up polluting every corner of the globe. But a team of European scientists may have found a unique solution to the plastic problem. They discovered that a common insect can chew sizable holes in a plastic shopping bag within 40 minutes. “This study is another milestone discovery for the research on biodegradation of plastics,” says Wei-Min Wu, an environmental engineer at Stanford University. The discovery was led by Federica Bertocchini, a developmental biologist at the University of Cantabria in Spain. She first noticed … Read more