14 DAY TRIAL // Word on the street has it that life emerged from clay. Or so one very famous book keeps telling us. Well, it appears that plastic debris – the same one that environmentalists have been pointing the finger at for quite some time now – is fairly prolific when it comes to augmenting our planet's biodiversity.
Long story short, a new paper in the journal Environmental Science and Technology documents the discovery of a so-called “plastisphere” at the bottom of our seas and oceans, ABC reports.
Science talk aside, what they means is that they have found a bunch of new microbe species that seem to thrive on the plastic bottles and whatnot humans have so courteously been sharing with marine wildlife over the past years.
The researchers are still trying to figure out whether the plastic debris sparked these new life forms because it was feeling lonely on the ocean floor and wanted some company, or if maybe it felt bad about all the marine creatures it has killed and decided to give something back to the planet.
All I know is that, whatever environmentalists might tell us, throwing plastic bottles in the ocean is nothing to feel guilty about. Just think of it as providing these newly discovered microbes with a home. And yes, I am being ironic.