PET plastics eating bacterium

Good news!  

A team of scientists led by Dr Shosuke Yoshida from the Kyoto Institute of Technology in Japan, discovered a new bacterium with the ability to completely break down PET plastics in a relatively short space of time.

The scientists were able to recreate the bacterium, which has been named Ideonella sakaiensis, in the lab and have them break down the plastic to its basic building blocks: two environmentally harmless monomers called terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol.

And if you are wondering why should we care about this progress, it is obvious that you have not read about the "plastic soup" that Captain Charles Moore discovered at the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, 

Read this at Gizmag.