“After a while, I noticed lots of holes and we found it wasn’t only chewing, it was, so that was the beginning of the story.”

“My beehives were plagued with wax worms, so I started cleaning them, putting the worms in a plastic bag,” said Dr Federica Bertocchini, at the Biological Research Centre in Madrid. That usually requires a lot of heating, but the enzymes work at normal temperatures, in water and at neutral pH. The enzymes can be easily synthesised and overcome a bottleneck in plastic degradation, the researchers said, which is the initial breaking of the polymer chains. The only recycling at scale today uses mechanical processes and creates lower-value products.Ĭhemical breakdown could create valuable chemicals or, with some further processing, new plastic, thereby avoiding the need for new virgin plastic made from oil.

Polyethylene makes up 30% of all plastic production and is used in bags and other packaging that make up a significant part of worldwide plastic pollution. The researchers said the study showed insect saliva may be “a depository of degrading enzymes which could revolutionise ”. The discovery came after one scientist, an amateur beekeeper, cleaned out an infested hive and found the larvae started eating holes in a plastic refuse bag.

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