As per Euronews.green, some 12 million tons of plastic get into our large waterways yearly, but scientists are not able to detect all of it, which is why they think that bacteria feeds of it.

Researchers at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research came up with this theory, as the material could be consumed by the microorganisms, due to the fact that sunlight decomposes plastic whenever it gets in our oceans.

Maaike Goudriaan, a doctoral student of NIOZ, said that "this is the first time we have proven in this way that bacteria actually digest plastic into CO2 and other molecules."

While she says that this is not a solution to the plastic pollution that our oceans have to deal with, it does provide answers with regards to where some of the plastic vanishes.

Doing experiments in a controlled lab environment, scientists determined that bacteria is able to consume around one percent of the plastic waste that finds itself in our oceans per year.

Back in 2020, another team in Germany was able to find bacteria that has the ability to consume some forms of plastic waste.