Scientists Think New Microbes Could Be Feasting on Our Plastic Trash – But We’re Not Off the Hook…

According to new surveys of marine areas where great amounts of (our) plastic waste accumulate, places like the North Atlantic Gyre are not as full of plastic as expected, given our exorbitant production and disposal of the material. Considering that our use of plastic is still growing, more and more of it should, logically, end up in the oceans. However, that seems to not be the case. What could be the reason? Ricard Sole who studies complex systems at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, together with his team propose that there might have been a population boom in microbes that have evolved the ability to biodegrade plastic materials.

Sole’s theory is certainly a very interesting one – after all, we all certainly would wish for something to help us deal with the overwhelming mess that we have created in the oceans. However, other researchers, while they agree with the findings showing far less plastic accumulated in the oceans than expected, also point out that there are several other possibilities when it comes to the explanation of this phenomenon.

On the other hand, even if it turns out to be true that the plastic in the oceans is being degraded faster than we have hitherto thought, it may not necessarily be a good thing. For example, biodegradation could be speeding up the process of breaking down of large pieces of plastic into lots and lots of tiny pieces, which may prove to be even more dangerous – for instance, the small pieces being easily ingested by even the smaller marine animals.

It is, however, possible that some kinds of microbes have evolved the ability to break down plastic. Linda Amaral-Zettler of the Netherlands Institute for Sea Research found that the microbes colonizing floating plastic are distinct from those in the surrounding waters. Some of them may be feeding on pollutants. As an effect of that, the plastic in the oceans is creating a new ecosystem that Amaral-Zettler and her team call “the platisphere”. Yet, the studies that have been done thus far did not find any microbes that actually break down plastic in the plastisphere. It is a possibility that they could not have been discovered yet. In the end, the particular processes are still unknown to us and wait to be researched further.

All the findings considered, one thing remains absolutely for sure. “To really tackle the plastic problem,” says Matthew Cole of Exeter University in the UK, “we need to stop it getting into the oceans in the first place.” Nobody and nothing will do this work for us, and certainly not the microbes, even if they may possibly help. Even though the amount of plastic waste we find in the oceans is smaller than expected, it still is truly enormous. Every year, we dump around 8.8 million tons of plastic into the oceans – where it endangers around 700 marine species with extinction.

To learn more about how to stop using single-use plastics in your household, check out One Green Planet’s #CrushPlastic campaign!

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