Monday, April 24, 2017

How tiny worms could solve the world’s plastic problem


Scientists in Italy may have discovered a small solution to a big problem: they’ve found a caterpillar that eats plastic bags and shits out antifreeze. The author of a paper published today in Current Biology, Federica Bertocchini, discovered this by accident: An amateur beekeeper, she considered waxworms pests. She plucked several of them off of her beehives and put them in a plastic bag. When she left them for a few minutes, they managed to chew through the bag and escape. So waxworms — technically wax moth caterpillars — can not only chew through plastic, they can break it down…

This story continues at The Next Web

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