Durable plastic sold under commercial name PET is considered as a massive environmental hazard because it is resistant to breakdown. However, researchers have discovered a potential new match for this tough plastic. During a research project a research team from Japan has come across a microbe that is amazingly good at eating PET plastic sheets.

According to the World Economic Forum, production of an estimated 342 million tons of plastic is recorded each year across the world, and just nearly 14% is collected for recycling.

Almost all plastic degrades at an extremely slow pace, but PET, which stands for polyethylene terephthalate, is among the most durable. In year 2013 alone, nearly 61 million tons of the colorless plastic was produced across the world.

Earlier, the sole species detected to break down PET were rare fungi. Now, Japanese scientists have come up with bacteria that can biodegrade this enduring plastic.

Study co-author Kohei Oda, an applied microbiologist at the Kyoto Institute of Technology in Japan, said that the bacterium is the first strain to possess a potential of degrading PET completely into water and carbon dioxide.

Around 250 samples of PET debris were collected by the researchers from soil and wastewater at a plastic-bottle-recycling site. The samples were scanned for bacteria that could eat PET.

They identified a latest species of bacteria, which they dubbed Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6 that can possibly, completely break down a thin film of PET after 42 days at 86 degrees Fahrenheit. The researchers said that the cells’ appendages could have secreted compounds that assisted in dissolving the plastic.

Genetic and biochemical studies spotted two main enzymes present in the breakdown of PET. The scientists mentioned that one enzyme functioned with water for breaking down the plastic into an intermediate substance, which was then broken down by the other enzyme into basic building blocks of the PET.

The discovery will possibly have vast real-world applications, as bacteria must be easier to integrate into devices to break down PET in comparison to fungi.