Plastic has become an important part of our modern life and are used in different sectors of applications like packaging, building materials, consumer products and much more. Each year about 300 million tons of plastic are produces world wide and about 1.2 million kg of plastic enters the earth’s oceans and this figure could be doubled in the next decade. Demand of plastic increasing year after year. Plastic are non-biodegradable synthetic material made from a wide range of organic polymer such as polyethylene, PVC, Nylon etc., that can be moulded into shape while soft and then set into rigid or slightly plastic which leads to plastic pollution. Degradation is defined as reduction in the molecular weigh of the polymer. Several attempts have been made to biologically degrade plastic such as soil burial treatment, Fungal treatment etc. but the little success. A team of European scientists discovered a common insect that can help in global pollution crisis by degrading plastic shopping bag.
The discovey was led by Federica Bertocchini, I a developmental biologist at the University of Cantabria in Spain. She was an amateur beekeeper, while cleaning beehives she found that it was infested with wax worms which feed on beehives and area headache for beekeepers. She collected the larvae and placed it inside the plastic cover and observed there were wholes in the plastic cover made by the wax worms.
Paolo Bombelli and Chris Howe research scientist working on biodegradable plastic in Cambridge University joined with Federica Bertocchin keen to understand the molecular mechanism if consumption and degradation of plastic. Their research finding were published in current biology.
Honeycomb wax moth is the common name of Galberia mellonella a Lepidopteran insect that belongs to pyralidae family found widely. A caterpillar larvae measuring about 16-20 mm completes it’s life cycle in beehives.
They chew and swallow plastic as it is similar to consuming beehives a natural plastic. Wax is a polymer, which consist of a long string of carbon atom held together, with other atom branching off the sides of the chain. Both wax and polyethylene into ethylene glycol, representing unbonded ‘monomer’ molecules.
Scientists say that the degradation rate is extremely fast compared to other recent discoveries. For example, gut bacteria in the larvae of the Indian meal moth Plodia interounctella can break down polythelene takes between 100 and 400 years to degrade in land fill sites. Wax moth as the ability of degrading average 5.5 gram plastic bag in a month.
As the molecular details of the process become known, the researcher say it could be used to devise a biotechnological solution on an industrial scale for managing polythelene waste and plastic pollution. Thus there is another ray of hope for plastic free environment.
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