Cambridge University researchers have discovered that a caterpillar can eat plastic. Scientists conducted experiments and found a caterpillar that traditionally eats wax found in beehives can break down the chemical components of plastic.

Around the world, manufacturers produce 80 million tons of plastic each year. The plastic is used to make a variety of things including shopping bags, toys, and the packaging around food products. Currently, it takes hundreds of years for the plastic to decompose. However, larvae of a particular type of moth, wax moth Galleria mellonella, can make holes in a plastic bag in under an hour.

Dr. Paolo Bombelli, a biochemist at Cambridge University and researcher in the study, explained that the Caterpillar would be the starting point. The next step will be to understand how this process operates. Ultimately, Dr. Bombelli hopes to provide a technical solution for decreasing the amount of plastic waste.

At this time, researchers believe microbes living within the Caterpillar as well as the insect itself may play a role in breaking down the plastic. If scientists can discover the chemical process, then it could lead to a solution to decreasing the amount of plastic waste on planet Earth.

Researchers are planning to create and find a viable way to get rid of plastic waste and work on a solution to save the environment.

Finding this caterpillar marks the first step to biodegrade plastic. Researchers published the study in the Journal of Current Biology.

A new study from Zendrive, which is being called the largest distracted driving study ever conducted so far, found that 88% of-of all trips are made while using a mobile device in some way. Researchers examined over 3 million in anonymous drivers. Over the course of the study, researchers found that over the course of 570 million trips and covering 5.6 billion cumulative miles the amount of time a phone is used in an hour driving is approximately 3.5 minutes or 6% of the entire drive. As a result, scientists discovered that over the course of the study 280 million miles cumulatively were driven while distracted.

Previous research has found that distracted driving increases the chances of a collision of over 20 times. The data in the survey averaged out about 600 million trips during the study in which distracted driving took place at some point in time. Further analysis of the data found that on average, the survey group engaged in distracted driving roughly 105 times per hour per person.

Over the past two years, there has been an increase in traffic accident fatalities, according to Zendrive. However, the rise in a road accident deaths cannot all be attributed to smartphones. Of course, the implications of distracted driving a pretty clear. All over the world, people use their phones while driving to changes songs, modify the GPS donations, or visit social networks. Researchers analyzing the data found that all of these activities are extremely dangerous. However, Silicon Valley is working on alternatives by providing other types of apps that force applications to use Bluetooth and artificial intelligence assistants to keep drivers focus on the road and instead of looking at their cell phone.

Moreover, researchers found the most distracted state in the United States is Vermont followed by Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.