Busy bees produce natural plastics
University of Tennessee researcher and team investigate a naturally occurring polyethylene-like plastic made by bees.
image: University of Tennessee, Knoxville Associate Professor Laura Russo has published new findings on naturally occurring polyethylene-like plastic made by bees.
Credit: University of Tennessee
Associate Professor Laura Russo, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and fellow researchers published new findings in PNAS on naturally occurring polyethylene-like plastic made by bees. The material rapidly degrades under ambient environmental conditions over one year.
Titled “Rapid soil degradation of a crosslinked, semicrystalline polyethylene-like polyester produced by Colletes bees,” the article explores the chemical attributes and ambient degradation of plastics made by so-called cellophane bees.
“We hope that studying these degradable plastics will lead to future innovations in reducing plastic pollution,” said Russo, who worked with Assistant Professor Jonathan Coote, Virginia Tech, and colleagues on the study.
Nearly a third of plastic produced globally is mismanaged and much of it enters the environment as plastic waste. Roughly one third is polyethylene, which persists in the environment for centuries. To address this plastic pollution crisis, many have attempted to design biodegradable polyethylene-like plastics, primarily polyesters, which deliver polyethylene-like properties but decomposes quickly.
“Unfortunately, most polyethylene-like polyesters exhibit little biodegradability due to their crystallinity and hydrophobicity,” said Russo. “This work exposes a remarkable natural exception to this pattern in the nest linings of the ‘cellophane bee,’ Colletes inaequalis.”
These bee nests consist of a polyethylene-like polyester that shows significant degradation under environmental conditions over one year and presents what could be a valuable resource for bioinspired design of next generation polyethylene-like polyesters.
The research team collected nest cell linings from two sites in Tennessee in 2023, 2024, and 2026 to comprehensively characterize the polyester. It is semicrystalline and has a polyethylene-like degradation temperature and crystal structure. However, the bees’ polyester degraded rapidly over four months in soil under ambient environmental conditions. The polyester’s environmental degradation may also be accelerated by certain enzymes.
Russo and team believe this marks the first polyethylene-like polyester shown to degrade this rapidly in the environment and could be a valuable resource for bioinspired design of future polyesters.