<h5>Why is plastic pollution a problem?</h5>  <p>Plastic is not biodegradable. It is rarely recycled (unlike metal items!) and has nowhere to go once thrown away. Plastic pollution occurs when discarded plastic items disturb the natural ecosystem of a place. This can harm both humans and animals that are a part of the ecosystem.</p>
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To get rid of plastic, it is burned in landfills. This process releases harmful gases that cause air pollution. In oceans, plastic floats around endlessly until some poor animal thinks that it’s food and eats it. These days, micro-plastics have also made their way into soil and water.
</p> <h5>What are plastic-eating bacteria?</h5>  <p>Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) is one of the most commonly used plastics in the world. It’s used to make bottles, clothing, etc., and comprises 12 percent of all waste in the world! Like all other kinds of plastic, the atomic structure of PET is also formed by molecules being chained together.</p>
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In 2016, Japanese researchers studied PET samples and discovered a previously unknown strain of bacterium growing on its molecular chains. They named this bacterium “Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6”.
</p> <h5>What’s so special about the Ideonella sakaiensis?</h5>  <p>You may be surprised to learn that plastic-eating bacteria isn’t new. They’ve been around since the 1990s. But the older plastic-eating bacteria weren't very useful to us. They evolved to feed on molecular chains in living things. Eating the molecular chains in plastic was just a happy accident.</p>
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<p>The Ideonella sakaiensis is specifically a plastic-eating bacteria. PET is its main source of nutrients, which it gobbles up rather happily! However, left on its own, even the Ideonella sakaiensis takes its own sweet time munching up PET (we’re talking years).</p>
<p>Recently, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin (UTAUS) figured out a way to speed up the process - using artificial intelligence (AI).
</p> <h5>AI and plastic-eating bacteria…Are we talking about a sci-fi movie here?</h5>  <p>Nope, it’s all real.</p>
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With the help of AI, the researchers at UTAUS figured out how to target the molecular chains of PET in a specific way. With this discovery, the Ideonella sakaiensis can finish eating the plastic in eight days instead of years!
</p> <h5>Is the plastic-eating bacteria the solution to the plastic problem?</h5>  <p>Yes and no. In this case, the Ideonella sakaiensis is eating the molecular chains holding the plastic together and not the plastic itself. Once it’s done with its meal, what’s left is sludge that’s going to be made into more plastic.</p>
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<p>Yes, I know what you’re thinking. The point is to make less plastic, not more. But plastic isn’t going anywhere. The best we can do at the moment is recycle it properly, which wasn’t happening before the plastic-eating bacteria came along. That’s because plastic, as a material, isn’t suitable for recycling; only downcycling.</p>
<p>Thanks to the Ideonella sakaiensis’s appetite, the leftover sludge can be remade into high-quality plastic in a much more eco-friendly way than new plastic. So, yay for small wins!
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Could plastic-eating bacteria be the answer to the world’s plastic pollution crisis or is it too good to be true? Let’s find out.

Building The Bacteria That Can Eat Plastic

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