This is the caterpillar of the large wax moth. The team of researchers claims to have discovered substances in the animal’s saliva that break down polyethylene, a type of plastic that is very difficult to break down and in common use.
They claim that if this type of plastic is exposed to the caterpillar’s saliva for an hour, it has the same effect as leaving it in the wild for months or even years.
Two enzymes have been found in the caterpillar’s saliva that can break down plastic at room temperature. According to scientists, this would be the first time that such a valuable substance has been discovered in nature.
Researchers already discovered in 2017 that saliva may be able to break down polyethylene. In the new Research Go into more detail on what substances in saliva caused this.
Polyethylene is used in all shapes and sizes, such as canisters and water pipes. Almost everyone uses the substance even if it has been further processed in plastic bags or, for example, shampoo bottles.
The substance is responsible for around thirty percent of all plastic consumption in the world. But there are hardly any possibilities to break it down. As a result, there is polyethylene waste all over the world that cannot be broken down – think plastic soup in the ocean.
So the scientists’ discovery looks promising, but how realistic is it? Professor Violette Geissen from Wageningen University and Research, specializing in soil biology and environmental management among other things, temper expectations. You can never clean all the plastic with this. At sea, for example, perhaps five percent of plastic waste is on the surface, the rest is much deeper. You can’t bring a single animal there. “
Perhaps this will become interesting in the long run, Geissen points out, but in her opinion it will be an extremely time-consuming and costly process to make it happen. ” To use this knowledge to develop a technique that can be applied in practice, it will take many years of effort. But the question is also, how many of these larvae do you need to break down everything we consume? For the moment, it remains important to reduce plastic waste as much as possible “.
