Dear Editor,

This past year has been hard on mental health, among my friend-circle and, so it seems, North America and the rest of the world. Although the pandemic hasn’t carved a very deep notch locally, the restrictions we’ve been undergoing have made it difficult to deal with the losses from other diseases and accidents. Several people to whom I was quite attached, people with whom I expected to share more adventures, have been taken out of our world. We have been restrained from gathering to mourn and remember, so the grief remains strong, while the capacity to carry on and make new plans has become worn and threadbare. 

Here’s one thing I found out about recently, which may just give some small relief to the life-weary. There’s a bacterium which has learned to eat plastic. The most persistent plastic, PET, the hard glassy plastic of which water bottles are made, was thought to be indestructible by natural forces. In a recycling plant in Japan, it has been discovered that a bacterium with the capacity to dissolve the waxy coating on some plant leaves has evolved a mechanism to similarly decompose the long polymer chains of PET plastic. 

So, do we give up on our recycling projects, and toss empties to the ditch, buying and emptying more and more water bottles, now that we know germs can eat them? That hardly seems like a reasonable course of action. I question why people in a place that has good quality water would buy single-use indestructible bottles filled with water from Montreal, among other places. Check out where it comes from, and where the bottles are going; you might change your mind about buying, drinking and tossing. It will take a long time to develop the methods of utilizing this newly-discovered bacterium, and controlling for unintended consequences. We’re decades ahead of the supply/demand curve, with vast stockpiles of random plastic waste, but maybe our civilization will be spared an ignominious end of choking on plastic bottles, thanks to a rapidly-evolving microscopic lifeform.  

Robert Wills 

Shawville and Thorne, Que.