On March 3rd, CNN reported that the "garbage mountain" of Gyeongbuk Aseong, with a video of the dump, is an international embarrassment.
Police have also started an investigation into how the wastes were accumulated without such measures. CNN reported that the amount of plastic waste exported overseas has also been significantly reduced. Environmental groups have introduced their point of view to reduce annual plastic consumption per capita by 2015, more than in the US and China.
The plastic pollution problem, which is becoming more and more serious, is not a problem in only our country.
You may have heard of the case of a turtle with a straw on its nose, the news of a garbage island in the sea, or the news that foreign bodies have found a lot of plastic trash in their whales. But, there was one good news today about this plastic garbage problem that is not rotting but piled up.
Domestic researchers have found clues about how to quickly break down vinyl and plastic.
They have found a moth called 'honey bee's name moth.' It feeds the honeycomb, and the during the process of eating honeycomb, moth larva produce an enzyme that breaks down the 'polyethylene', the main ingredient of plastic and plastics.
British and Spanish researchers announced earlier this year that the larvae will break down polyethylene in 2017. 100 caterpillars were able to disintegrate about 92 mg of polyethylene within 12 hours, so they were noted as a solver of plastic pollution problem. But at that time, the researchers could not figure out how the larvae would break down the polyethylene, but this time the researchers in Korea confirmed the enzyme.
The study was published in the online edition of Cell Reports, an international journal in the field of biology. Dr. Ryu Chungmin of the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology, who conducted the research, predicted that culturing a large amount of polyethylene glycolase would help solve the problem of plastic contamination. In addition, it was expected that the development of new plastics with natural decomposition would be possible.