Oil Eating Bacteria

Learned something interesting today in Government 2, Apparently a company called Osprey Biotechnics has created an oil eating bacteria called Munox. The intentional use of Munox is to help clean up the gulf oil spills. According to company president Vincent Scuilla "They would apply our bacteria directly on the water. The Bacteria attaches to the oil, which is its food, and the things start colonizing. And now these hungry bacteria are literally consuming the oil, digesting it, and breaking it down to harmless end products like CO2 and H2O." Four words. Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Oil is a form of plastic, therefore meaning that this bacteria is truly consuming plastics. Why not release the bacteria in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and allow it to consume the floating plastics that have joined together due to the current and created a mass twice the size of texas of floating garbage. With the use of the bacteria we can potentially erase the tons of garbage we have dumped into the ocean due to laziness and habit. Although the bacteria will not consume everything, (metals, fabrics, etc.) it will destroy the majority of the Patch allowing us to deal with the smaller amount left behind. The interesting aspect of the bacteria is that it only eats plastic based items, therefore when the plastic is not longer available, the bacteria dies, removing the risk for spreading to land. This is something we as a species should be worried about, and should be attempting to fix.