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this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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Isn't that the lore for the cat adventure game Stray? Some little bug thing was able to eat plastic, they deployed it but it got out of control and mutated to consume all kinds, now chunks of the city are cut off to prevent the spread.
Hope that doesn't happen smile.
Edit: Afterthought, why does this alleged microbe consume plastic? What nutritional value does oil / hydrocarbons provide?
Not many nutrients, but a lot of energy. Think of the calorie content of cooking oil or butter. That’s why cars can run on cooking oil.
Iirc they bred some worms that are able to, but not prefer to, consume and digest plastics. So the issue is that they essentially had to deprive the worms of other food sources before they chose to eat the available plastic.
There may be some more promising research going into microbes or bacteria that i am not aware of though, so this answer isn’t necessarily comprehensive