Currently viewing the category:
"Plastic"
Researchers at San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography have released a study that claims plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has increased by 100 times the amount of what was found in the region 40 years ago. Insects at the bottom of food chain are laying eggs in the pieces of small plastic that are ubiquitous in this area the size of Texas. While the Pacific Garbage Patch is commonly perceived to be an endless mess of plastic bottles and trash bobbing up and down in the water, the reality is that thousands of square miles of the ocean’s surface is covered by tiny bits of plastic that have broken down to the size of a human fingernail.
Read the rest of Scripps Study Shows Plastic in Pacific Garbage Patch Has Increased 100-Fold
Permalink |
Add to
del.icio.us |
digg
Post tags: ecosystems, pacific garbage patch, pacific ocean, plastic, plastic waste, scripps, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sea skaters, seaplex
Plastics represent one of the biggest waste problems in the world because they take a really, really long time to break down. But a recent discovery by a group of Yale students could help speed the process. On an expedition to the rainforest of Ecuador, students from Yale’s Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry discovered a previously unknown fungus that has a healthy appetite for polyurethane. According to Fast Company, the fungus is the first one that is known to survive on polyurethane alone, and it can do so in an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment, which suggests that it could be used at the bottom of landfills.
Read the rest of Yale Students Discover Rare Plastic-Eating Fungus in the Ecuadorian Rainforest
Permalink |
Add to
del.icio.us |
digg
Post tags: biology, ecuador, fungi, fungus, landfills, microbes, Pestalotiopsis microspora, plastic, polymers, polyurethane, Yale, Yale University
Ads
