Can This Plastic Actually Eat Itself After Use?

Amaze Lab

Humanity’s reliance on plastics continues to grow, despite environmental concerns and finding microplastics inside the human body. Enter this new type of plastic, one that literally eats itself once it is no longer needed.

Transcript

00:00this might not look like much but it could literally change humanity's future plastics

00:08have been a problem for a while with microplastics now having been found inside the human body still

00:14our reliance on plastics continues to grow pointing to a huge problem and source of

00:18growing concern for human health and the health of our planet's ecosystems enter this new type

00:23of plastic one that literally eats itself once it's no longer needed it was created using the

00:29bacillus subtilis bacteria a microorganism capable of eating plastic researchers engineered it to

00:35survive the high heat plastic production process resulting in a product which has plastic eating

00:40bacteria built right into it once the plastic has been used and is ready to be discarded it only

00:45needs nutrients and moisture to activate the bacteria which then literally consumes the plastic this could

00:51be the solution we've been looking for with regards to solving the plastic crisis especially as it's

00:56becoming increasingly clear the recycling simply isn't effective enough what's more the researchers

01:01say that there's another wild side effect of adding this bacteria to plastic products they say the

01:06resulting plastic is actually stronger and stretches better than conventional varieties

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