In a landfill, a plastic bottle can take more than a thousand years to break down. But a new process can transform polyethylene plastic in days, using bacteria to eat the waste and then turn it into a ...

While scientists have already discovered — or, in some cases, genetically engineered — plastic-eating bacteria, a new study found that more of these natural recyclers can break down plastic than ...

Learn how plastic pollution is creating new pathways for antibiotic resistance to become an even bigger public health threat.

In an era marked by an escalating global plastic pollution crisis, science may have found a potential solution in an unlikely candidate – bacteria. Recent research has brought to light certain strains ...

The world has a big plastic problem that it's yet to fix. We're trying to reduce our reliance on plastic, but that's seemingly impossible in modern society. The material is too important for our daily ...

Plastic pollution is a massive problem, and the problem has become so bad that scientists have even found melted plastic ingrained in rocks on remote islands in Brazil. The plastic buildup also ...

Comamonadacae is a family of bacteria often found growing on plastics in water. A new study finds a bacterium in this family can break down the plastic for food. Researchers also identified the enzyme ...

The plastic bottles we throw away today will be around for hundreds of years. It’s one of the key reasons why the mounting plastic pollution problem, which is having a deadly effect on marine life, is ...

Scientists have genetically engineered bacteria to efficiently turn plastic waste into useful chemicals. The bacteria, described in a study published in the journal Nature Communications, could help ...

Researchers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia have found that there are marine bacteria living in all the world’s oceans that are able to consume and digest ...

A pair of studies examines ways to break down plastic, but there may be risks in trying to amplify these natural processes. Reading time 4 minutes It’s overwhelming to think about how polluted our ...

Plastic-eating bacteria could help to one day tackle some of the 14 million tons of plastic that is offloaded into our oceans every year. Plastic pollution leads to severe impact on marine ecosystems ...