How do plastic-eating bacteria work – do they gain energy from the consumption; and what are the waste products?
In: Biology
The typical main waste products are carbon dioxide and water, the same things you get from burning it. Other chemicals can be produced, too.
As a rule of thumb: If there is a lot of some chemical where a reaction can release energy, then there is probably some lifeform that has evolved to use it as energy source. Plastic doesn’t occur naturally, so it has only been around for about 100 years. That’s a very short time span for evolution, so plastic-eating bacteria are still rare and limited to some specific types of plastic.
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