Plastic gobbling Caterpillars to feast on waste

Plastic is not known for breaking down easily. But, at last plastic may have to surrender in front of humble caterpillar ! As per researchers, there could be a solution for plastic waste, after all. They are pinning their hopes on caterpillar called wax worm. The research has been done at the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology of Cantabria by Federica Bertocchini and her team. They discovered that the plastic bags with wax worms became full of holes, in no time. They followed it up to find that, in 12 hours, munching of plastic by wax worms results in plastic mass. They also noticed that the wax worms were ingesting the plastic and also chemically converting the polyethylene into ethylene glycol, according to CSIC. Federica Bertocchini said, “We are planning to implement this finding into a viable way to get rid of plastic waste, working towards a solution to save our oceans, rivers, and all the environment from the unavoidable consequences of plastic accumulation.” She added that “However, we should not feel justified to dump polyethylene deliberately in our environment just because we now know how to bio-degrade it.” At last, the solution to menace of plastic waste seems to be in sight.