That's amazing, and a bit scary. Hopefully the genes won't get into bacteria, mould etc that would eat the bottles and cartons straight off our shelves...

FWIW, if they can do it to sheet polythene, what about the oil on polluted land & shores or gunked sea-birds etc ??

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Years ago ,I raised large meal worms in a styrafoam cooler,which they ate completely,along with the polybags I used as bedding for them..nature finds a way...

Years ago ,I raised large meal worms in a styrafoam cooler,which they ate completely,along with the polybags I used as bedding for them..nature finds a way...

Aren't we ALL consumers of carbon...:-)?

The caterpillar produces something that breaks the chemical bond, perhaps in its salivary glands or a symbiotic bacteria in its gut.

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Hopefully the genes won't get into bacteria

Well, if we're talking production of this enzyme foron a large scale then that's exactly what is going to be done: The genes for the enzyme will be transferred into a bacterium which will produce it and the enzyme will be filtered out of the resulting mix.

Of course they first need to check whether what the caterpillars excrete is actually less of a problem than the polyethylene was. Otherwise we're just shifting a problem around.

Hmm. Our local utilities have spent a lot of time and trouble replacing old, leaky street piping with plastic. Would be unfortunate if these bag-bugs got a taste for that...

Polyethylene is a petroleum product, when it doesn't break down, it represents a type of carbon sink. It remains out of the atmosphere.

If we make it biodegradable then we release that carbon into the atmosphere and add to carbon emissions.

Plastic in landfills, or carbon in the atmosphere. I would choose the landfills. Why are we trying to make carbon neutrality more difficult? Look at the big picture people!

From being eaten alive as fish bait to being puree'd alive to experiment on digesting plastic the wax worm is yet another victim of Human Sadism.

This is Barbarically Cruel.

Plastics can be reused, recycled and burnt in closed systems for energy.

The prevention of dumping it in the environment is the obvious solution especially if it has value as a reusable resource thus saving the resources and energy used to make it.

Dumped plastic in Rivers and Ocean Gyres can be collected for recycling of an energy source.

Enzymes will be on no use for Plastic dumped in the environment and would be hugely expensive to produce.