Wriggling critters armed with enzymes can break down plastics that would otherwise take decades, or even centuries to degrade.
At first glance there’s nothing particularly remarkable about waxworms. The larval form of wax moths, these pale wriggling grubs feed on the wax that bees use to make their honeycomb. For beekeepers, the pests are something to swiftly get rid of without a second thought.
But in 2017 molecular biologist Federica Bertocchini, who at the time was researching the embryonic development of vertebrates at the Spanish National Research Council, stumbled on a potentially game-changing discovery about these creatures.
Bertocchini, an amateur beekeeper, threw some of the waxworms in a plastic bag after cleaning her hive, and left them alone. A short time later, she noticed the worms had started producing small holes in the plastic, which begun degrading as soon as it touched the worms’ mouths.
That’s really interesting. Other than the common usage as antifreeze in your car and for airplane de-icing ethylene glycol is a precursor for plastics used in soda bottles. Left on it’s own ethylene glycol breaks down into CO2 eventually.
Wikipedia article about ethylene glycol including uses
Stack Overflow answer containing the ethylene glycol decomposition process
It’s also a molecule that can be used in the process to make any number of other products, including vanilla flavoring, per the article
Well we don’t need more of that… Shit.