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Researchers based in the Netherlands used a fleet of boats and aircraft to scan the immense accumulation of bottles, containers, fishing nets and microparticles known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" (GPGP) and found an astonishing build-up of plastic waste.
"We found about 80,000 tonnes of buoyant plastic currently in the GPGP," Laurent Lebreton, lead author of the study published in the journal Scientific Reports, told AFP.
That's around the weight of 500 jumbo jets, and up to sixteen times greater than the plastic mass uncovered there in previous studies.
But what really shocked the team was the amount of plastic pieces that have built up on the marine gyre between Hawaii and California in recent years.
They found that the dump now contains around 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, posing a dual threat to marine life.
Microplastics, tiny fragments of plastic smaller than 50mm in size that make up the vast majority of items in the GPGP, can enter the food chain when swallowed by fish.
The pollutants they contain become more concentrated as they work their way up through the food web, all the way to top level predators such as sharks, seals and polar bears.
Scientists have improved a naturally occurring enzyme which can digest some of our most commonly polluting plastics.
PET, the strong plastic commonly used in bottles, takes hundreds of years to break down in the environment.
The modified enzyme, known as PETase, can start breaking down the same material in just a few days.
This could revolutionise the recycling process, allowing plastics to be re-used more effectively.
...
Originally discovered in Japan, the enzyme is produced by a bacterium which "eats" PET.
Ideonella sakaiensis uses the plastic as its major energy source.
Polyesters, industrially produced from petroleum, are widely used in plastic bottles and clothing.
Current recycling processes mean that polyester materials follow a downward quality spiral, losing some of their properties each time they go through the cycle. Bottles become fleeces, then carpets, after which they often end up in landfill.
PETase reverses the manufacturing process, reducing polyesters to their building blocks, ready to be used again.
originally posted by: vonclod
a reply to: testingtesting
It sure is disgraceful, I could go political here but why bother..too many don't give a f@#$.