Scientists in Japan have discovered a new species of bacteria that can digest and breakdown the common plastic known as PET or polyethylene terephthalate. PET is considered to be a major environmental hazard because it is highly resistant to breakdown CBS News reports: An estimated 342 million tons of plastic are produced annually worldwide, and currently, only about 14 percent is collected for recycling, according to the World Economic Forum. Most plastic degrades extraordinarily slowly, but PET — short for polyethylene terephthalate — is especially durable, and about 61 million tons of the colorless plastic was produced worldwide in 2013 alone, according to the researchers. [In Photos: World’s Most Polluted Places] Previously, the only species found to break down PET were rare fungi. Now, scientists in Japan have discovered bacteria that can biodegrade this hardy plastic. “The bacterium is the first strain having a potential to degrade PET completely into carbon dioxide and water,” said study co-author Kohei Oda, an applied microbiologist at the Kyoto Institute of Technology in Japan. The researchers collected 250 samples of PET debris from soil and wastewater from a plastic-bottle-recycling site. They scanned these samples for bacteria that could eat PET. The scientists identified a [...]