Letter from the Editor

From the Editor

I don’t know about you, but the last issue of the Retort year always sneaks up and surprises me...and here we are. My favorite article this month is from Environmental Science & Technology...turns out that earthworms eat plastics in the soil. The worms preferred soils with bio-based polylactic acid (PLA) particles or petroleum-derived polyethylene terephthalate (PET) particles but actively avoided some semi-synthetic plastics. When the soil was spiked with monomers of PLA and PET, the worms were also attracted, suggesting that the animals were drawn in by the odors as potential cues for food. But we don’t really know how it turns out; how is it digested? IS it digested? This may eventually be a great boon for the environment and soil clean-up. One of my committee members in grad school, the late Ezzat Yonathan, often said that if you couldn’t get some decent results on a new project over the summer semester (ie, no classes!), you should drop it. I think about this every May; he was usually right, so just in case that’s your summer plan, keep it in mind!

Have a great summer.