Josh Day

Mr. Buescher
U.S History, Period 5
10 March 2016

Scientists in Japan have recently discovered a strain of bacteria that can

eat plastic, and while this sounds like a bad thing, it could solve a major problem
in our world today: pollution. It was stated in the academic journal Science
that "Ideonella rakaiensis breaks down the plastic by using two enzymes to
hydrolyze PET and a primary reaction intermediate, eventually yielding basic
building blocks for growth. This bacteria has the capability to solve the world's
fast growing problem with plastic pollution. This is vital to our environment and
its increasing issue of the growing pollution, and could decrease the amount of
plastic packaging that ends up in nature or clogging up infrastructures, which in
many cases affects wildlife.
One of the greatest effects that would result from this bacteria is that it
could remove a great amount of the plastic in the ocean, which could potentially
save many animals. There is currently more plastic in the ocean than there are
fish by 2,050 pounds, and this is polluting the entire ocean and affecting all the
creatures that live in the ocean. This could result in the death of many sea
creatures, along with the decrease in the industry of fish sales. There is a
numerous amount of species in the ocean that have yet to be discovered, and
many have been killed off because of the pollution issue in our world today. This
new discovery in Japan could solve these issues if it was used to break down
plastic and solve our world's pollution problem that is increasing every day.
Another effect that this bacteria could have on the environment is that it
could remove a great amount of trash and pollution in nature and
infrastructures. Over a third of plastic packaging is escapes and pollutes nature.
This bacteria has the opportunity to remove all the garbage surrounding parks,
the beach, state parks, and even neighborhoods. This would have the chance to
solve many f