Welcome to Brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio.

Hi, Brain Stuff, I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today's episode is another classic from our

archives.

It's about the discovery, in 2016, of bacteria that can eat certain types of plastic, and

thus break it down, giving us hope that we may one day be able to make a dent in humanity's

plastic waste.

These bacteria are still being researched, scientists say we're unfortunately still years

away from being to put this discovery into practical use, but it's still a fascinating

discovery.

Hey, Brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here.

One of the amazing things about our universe is that nothing really goes to waste.

For instance, you, the incredible masterwork that you are, happened to be composed of

the trash that exploded out of a supernova.

In every nuking cranny of the cosmos, the universe is reorganizing and reusing.

It is the great recycler.

Our planet recycles everything, water, carbon, nutrients of all kinds.

So it stands to reason that we'd be really good at recycling stuff here on Earth.

But we humans are only so, so recyclers.

Take plastic.

We do a great job of digging up ancient deposits of carbon in order to make the stuff, which

is recycling, sort of.

But since the 1940s, we've manufactured mind-boggling amounts of a material that will likely

...