Can wonder organisms such as ‘superworms’ really solve our plastic waste crisis?

We’re in deep trouble with plastics but we’ve got to fix the problem ourselves, says Harry Cockburn

Our planet is drowning in plastic. Call in the worms (Getty)

One word. Are you listening? Plastics... There’s a great future in plastics,” Dustin Hoffman’s character is told by his parents’ friend in the 1967 film The Graduate, as he considers his post-university future.

In the mid-to-late 20th century, the seductive malleability of plastics became a key aspect of the American Dream and helped to facilitate the crescendo of capitalism that has led to hyper-consumption in the western world.

But the “great future” plastics once had has unravelled. The limitless creative possibilities plastics provide has rapidly resulted in a limitless global surfeit of waste plastic, which is now clogging almost every conceivable ecosystem on our planet.