Every day, the equivalent of 2,000 garbage trucks full of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans, rivers, and lakes. This statement from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) website, drives home the point that plastic pollution is a global problem. Every year 19-23mn tonnes of plastic waste leaks into aquatic ecosystems, polluting lakes, rivers and seas. Plastic pollution can alter habitats and natural processes, reducing ecosystems’ ability to adapt to climate change, directly affecting millions of people’s livelihoods, food production capabilities and social well-being, according to the UNEP.So much for a depressing but factual introduction about plastic pollution. But a latest breakthrough has come as a beacon of hope. A team of researchers from UC San Diego has created a form of plastic that can basically recycle itself. Dr Adam Feist and Professor Jon Pokorski combined traditional polyurethane with a microbial spore to create plastic that can break down in compost or any other natural environment in around five months. The newly crafted biodegradable thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) is just as durable and elastic as traditional polyurethane, with the ability to stretch up to 15 times its original size. TPU is used in footwear, floor mats, cushions, and memory foam. But unlike other plastic, the new blend almost completely decomposes much faster.The biodegradable TPU was made with bacterial spores from a strain of Bacillus subtilis that has the ability to break down plastic polymer materials. Pokorski and Feist say that will help the environment by eliminated waste. They say plastic companies can start to mass-produce this kind of “self-eating” plastic right now, simply by adding the microbial spores to their existing ingredients. It’s about 10% more expensive, but they believe that’s worth it to help with pollution and climate change. “To make the biodegradable plastic, the researchers fed Bacillus subtilis spores and TPU pellets into a plastic extruder. The ingredients were mixed and melted at over 200F, then extruded as thin strips of plastic. To assess the material’s biodegradability, the strips were placed in both microbially active and sterile compost environments. Prof Pokorski said the compost setups were maintained at around 100F with a relative humidity ranging from 44-55%. Water and other nutrients in the compost triggered germination of the spores within the plastic strips, which reached 90% degradation within five months.Although the researchers still need to study what gets left behind after the material degrades, they believe that any lingering bacterial spores are likely harmless. Pokorski explained that Bacillus subtilis is a strain used in probiotics that’s generally regarded as safe to humans and animals and can even be beneficial to plant health. For the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, the bacterial spores were evolutionary nudged to adapt to the hot temperatures necessary for manufacturing the TPU. The spores also serve as a strengthening filler, similar to how rebar reinforces concrete, resulting in a TPU variant with enhanced mechanical properties—requiring more force to break and showing greater stretchability.“This is great because the addition of spores pushes the mechanical properties beyond known limitations where there was previously a trade-off between tensile strength and stretchability,” said Pokorski. The research team is now working on optimising the approach for use on an industrial scale.