until days show, we have creatures great and small. all of them useful, like derek house, which supply us with valuable milk and species which perform a vital function as pollination. but their diversity is increasingly under threat. and even some worms that have a surprising superpower all their own. hello and welcome to tomorrow. today the science show on g.w.

images of plastic waste in landfills and our oceans have become so commonplace. we risk becoming immune to them. but plastic is a serious problem that won't go away on its own. more and more plastic is manufactured every year. in 2018, most went to packaging 12 percent was used for consumer products. we should all reduce our plastic consumption because sooner or later it all ends up as waste. but how can we tackle all that discarded plastic chinese learn part of the solution to this gigantic problem, our political junkie column that decided to find out and made a few new friends on the way are doing something they were always thought was impossible. creating the non-bank readable

by jesting, the non digestible plastic this is how they would use a piece of styrofoam just the we if we could harvest their super power, we could get 3 or 4 plastic trash in weeks rather than send to reach. could see countless animals help clean the environment and avoid toxic plastic incineration. help solve our plastic problem. busy busy

2 they are oh, yeah, yeah. i had to say that mine, that night she split a cup at the molecular biologist who in 2017 made an important discovery by not cleaning water, maybe hide or basically what they used to find. but these worms managed to eat their way out of the plastic bag. this is something to grasp the importance of discovery. we 1st need to understand what plastic is. plastic is a mysterious material. frankel, a science writer, author, and real plastic. in the natural world, natural substances there, you know, sort of broken up by bacteria,

go back to their essential elements. are water, plastic doesn't do that. it just gets smaller and smaller and smaller but it still essentially lasts. that's why micro plastics stay in the environment for centuries to be. we see plastics, resistance to book a few years, a curse. but we forget that it's also part of it's miracle plastics really transform the world. they really create our modern or a world that is safe more colorful in the world that came before for most of our history, we have built things with stuff we found in nature. would rocks and metals. but there's the word modernize. there was a growing demand for properties that only scarce natural elements processed things

like raisin silk or ivory. and in the mid 19th century, the more worrying that so many elements were being able to make billiard balls and the elephants were being driven into extinction. eventually i'll be at the ball manufacturer promised the reach prize to whoever could find a more abundant substitute for ivory that caught the eye of an american and john wesley hyatt who spent several years tinkering in his workshop benchley came up with the stuff. so you avoid the plastic age, it begun adverts like visa, celebrative and with 0.00, that it did. they everything, the ragdoll, your lovely washable microbrews. read it because they were alive. live in our 7 noida, replaced shell coral and mother my lawn replaced the silk and bucket like replace the raise enough to lock up people. it's funny because

in the early years, plastic was seen as sort of a salvation in nature. and today we look at it is one of the chic anime's of the natural world. plastic is now everywhere. some are light and transparent like plastic bags. all those are extremely resistant, like bullet proof vests. what they all have in common is the polymers which just basically means they're materials that are made up repeating atomic units. and i think of them as like beads on a change. but plastic looks like how it feels, how it behaves. all of that depends on how the beans are them together. and the reason why plastic lasts so long in the environment is that nothing evolved to break down to stipe of bombs. or a key piece. that's what we thought. so these are like, you know, they have called me

a war and you can actually buy them online and watch them become it cute as you feed them with styrofoam. it's not the organisms themselves. it's the bacteria, those organisms probably if you think he's a professor of structural biology and he knows everything about enzymes. it's exciting times for certain places actually growing on the surface of just thinking to find new bugs and get the can't they just plastic. isolate their enzymes and then enhanced must produce them in by reactors. obviously we can't just create your own with. some of these technology can't help with the plastic operating in the

environment. however, it could revolutionize our recycling system. to really recycle something, you have to break it down to its basic elements so that you can rearrange them into something else. because we can't break down plastic bonds, we can only recycle it once or twice before it becomes unusable. and deaths wifey's warms can be a game changer. if you think about bio recycling, what you can do is take that grid and reuse it infinitely, in fact, sounds like scifi, but it's already on the way. for example, a french company name car because it's a radio using again, signs to recycle bottles like these and not just once or twice. but in theory, if in italy, if you can increase the value of the waist high in sensitizing market,

move forwards. lack of trust in the 1st place and instead of people actually getting money to consume, i'm still saying to people who'll be big money to take it back home again and we use it. so the technology walks, but it's not scalable yet. and it's still more expensive than virgin plastics. oil and gas is really cheap. so that means it's cheaper to make costly group of oil and gas than all recycled materials. you need to get these technologies work in the much bigger scale that we're currently doing in order to make it then i do believe that we really need to work hard. so can my warms with their enzymes solve our plastic problem? i think it's great if we can find things like, you know, me or worms that are, you know, the bacteria that while the last is really a design problem, it's that we're taking acid and we're using them all too often to make things that

are truly not necessary and serve, you know, we are in a toxic relationship with plastic. we invented it to substitute it for a pail box. and now we're turning to box to get rid of it. and i don't think you want it without glancing at me. you know, i like my glass light on my face in the middle of the fire instead, there are just people want to demonize. the last issue is the military only issue is how we break it, how we use it. and here is, well my screamy friends of an important lesson to teach us they have adapted to leave with plastic. 'd we should do the same

orion, my friend, here we are. go now. free. go and save the war eagle. the last incidental meal worms usually used as chicken feed or fish base. have another surprise and storm scientists at stanford university, already knew that various forms of plastic. now they've established that the worms can break down the toxic additives in plastic with no ill effect. so in theory, the meal worms could die non-plastic and then still be used as a animal feed. and now we turn to another industrious creature. in economic terms, honeybees have always punched about their weight, as pollinators and honey produces, they contribute around $2500000000.00 euros a year to the german economy and know not to mention their contribution to the

natural world. biologically speaking, there are 9 species of honeybee. most of them are native to asia. probably the best known these days is the western which has been spread by humans and can be found all over the world. and the next record will take a look at some subspecies of the western honeybee and explore how its genetic diversity could best be protected. and is getting a visit from agronomists. here to the west of berlin. mr. big, this is the moment of truth. let's see if you still find any drones in the regular work for the institute for be research near. he's come here hoping to find some rare bees. a huge problem is that bee species diversity is declining dramatically. the karni on honeybee is the one we have that's most genetically diverse. but the

real gem is the european darkie, which is now very rare. mr. skakel is one of the few people who breeds it, and that's why we're here today to get samples vegan has instituted, setting up europe's 1st honeybee gene database. gene banks for cattle, pigs and sheep have been around for some time. but there's been nothing of that kind of court bees anywhere in europe. it's needed because the genetic diversity of rb populations is declining fast. there are constantly new parasites as well as challenges due to climate change. we can only meet them if our bees genetic makeup is as diverse as the challenge is to make the database as comprehensive as possible. the scientists have been collecting samples from many b. colonies across germany. they vary widely in terms of the properties of such as gentleness, diligence, and swarming behavior. some types have become extremely rare. for example,

a european duck being until the mid 19th century, it was the most common honeybee in germany. but then it was displaced by the kani own, and i may be the conic up, you know, the carney omen honey bee expanded through breeding. and it prevailed because it is also relatively gentle with a relatively low swarming tendency. so people like tim and the dark be declined. that's gone so far that there are no more dark be colonies originally from germany . the only ones we have now, one or 2 percent of colonies are descended from ri, imports food off, waiting for the european dug. b. is alive and well in hot months, got because he had his 1st beans at the age of 10, and he's more interested in the colonies themselves than in how much money they yield. skegness seems the duck be as part of germany's history

over there who are there are lots of drones so all start collecting them in the uk of vague and carefully picks out the drones in the comb. the us please leave me a couple. i have a few young queens here that i need them to mate with and this is one last drone then vega collects a few worker bees for good measure. he needs samples of drones and workers from this colony for his gene database. another one is got out and luckily they're being nice today that back in his lab in who are no end off starts to prepare the material for the database 1st. he

preserves the frozen work of bees and alcohol that way. he has a record of that typical shape to help distinguish the different b.s. then come the droves to mail bees. extract under the microscope, it's high precision work. it's a routine procedure for him, but still mostly forced and you have to realize that the drone always dies when it is jackie lates. it would do that if it were mating with the queen. we only do this because we really need his sperm in order to preserve his traits for the future of bees here or elsewhere. in the precious is stored in liquid nitrogen at minus $196.00 degrees celsius,

a process known as cryo preservation. later they're going to examine samples of the drones, frozen together with a professor who heads the institute. the researchers want to know how good the quality of the sperm is. once it's defrosted. here you can see that after it's thought it was sperm cells still remain in the flagella, can still beat strongly and indicating that it's good. you could inseminate a queen with it and she'd be fertile. yes, it really looks like fresh sperm. looks really good. first genetic database for honeybees is just the 1st step towards a larger goal. the image of diversity among honeybees is endangered around the world. here in germany, they undergo a lot of selection and that decreases the genetic diversity. but globally,

the situation is even more dramatic because these selected species from germany and austria are exported around the world. that means they displace the sub species that are well adapted to the local conditions. and that's why our database is so significant. it can preserve these genetic resources for the future. it will take time before genetic databases for honeybees can be built up across europe or worldwide. but in germany, these research as a hoping to have filed away material from some 300 colonies by the end of 2021. here in that gene bank of b. biodiversity. if outlet is red, white flag, and even if you have a science question, you'd like us to answer candidate. if we featured on this show, you get a little surprise as a thank you. can just you'll

find us on the web at d.w. dot com slash science, or check us out on twitter. the nutritional components in milk and food, lactose fats, protein minerals and fishermen, mammals produce it to feed their young enough to fend for themselves. for us, humans, milk remains an important source of mutual even into adult it. that is despite estimates that 3 courses of the global population have difficulty digesting lactose . but a special kind of milk could be a game changer. this milk is said to be easier to digest. dairy farmer could stop, always has

a little in his morning coffee. it's known as a 2 milk that he hopes to ensure the future of his business. today, he's debuting his own 1000000 delivery service. how's the feeling about the new venture? well, it's another step, one of several we've undertaken since 2015 to diversify away from dairy production . we have to wait and see how well it's received. if we get customers, we don't know exactly what to expect. first he visited scamps to see if they're all in good shape. now that he's also making deliveries, he's working on a tight schedule. township is pretty standard, but his human toll cattle are not, at least not all of them. right. from the

outside, they all look alike, but there is a genetic difference. we haven't investigated these animals yet. we still need to do a d.n.a. test to find out which are a one and which are age 2. it's been expensive. we had to break up the herd and sell the cows that were a one, then we bred more of them from the basic stock. that's why the price of milk went up on the plus of different breeds produced milk with different proportions of the a one and a 2 variants of beta casein guernsey's have a lot of 8 to as do some jerseys, and some cement historian surmised that selective breeding over the ages change the composition of milk into the argument goes is the older form. nowadays, most european cows or anyone gets reader. we have 140 cows producing 6 and a half just 7000 liters of milk a year. that's about 22 leaders

a day with wind farms today, but that's only 3 quarters of the yield of a dairy cow widely found in intensive farming. but gavin's cows also yield good meat. unlike their high performing industrial counterparts. whether milk contains only are mostly a one or a 2, it all looks the same, but the difference is significant. that in no longer see you, it's clear that there are different. we see it ourselves. there are people with milk intolerance who buy their milk from us and can drink it without a problem, but not the other card. and lots of foreigners buy our milk. you know, there must be something different about it. but of course we can prove it scientifically. we don't have the money to do that. it's kind of human to love a one and 8 to denote 2 forms of the beta casein protein made up of 209, amino acids. but there is one difference between them in a to milk,

an amino acid called proline occurs impositions. 67, anyone in addition to delivering, gavin has set up a little kiosk where people can buy his milk. his customers seem happy. yes i'm just going to milk is great, very wholesome for the children too. we like it a lot kind of pushed it to. i'm not milk intolerant. i just feel the other kind of milk isn't is right for me. while this one is so new and it's guess that we have visitors recently, i always have this milk at home because after one of them said he can't drink milk at all. if he does, he has to rush to the bathroom. i told him i had a 2 milk, you know, he tried it and it was fine. so it really seems to work for him to do it. i thought it was one hypothesis is that it might work in the case of milk,

protein intolerance, where enzymes cannot clean the proline in a 2 milk. whereas they can cleave the histidine in a one milk. but this really is a protein fragment called b, c. m 7, which could cause gastrointestinal problems. this doesn't apply to lactose intolerance though. since a 2 milk also contains lactose as well as other key components of a strong immune system. that's especially important for calves to step dad and wants his girls as he calls them to be as healthy as possible. they're fed on a diet of grass, corn and wheat before the afternoon delivery. the farmer has to process the milk and fill the bottles, which he does in his own onsite plant. sales manager, both on our hands explains that with normal milk. this is a job usually done by the dairies. i not with

a 2 mil cause you need another step in the goods flow chains, a whole new handling path and the logistics chain and the large dairies aren't ready for that. so we decided to do it ourselves. you need to be pioneering visionary. but there was a media demand because of the approximately $800.00 households need to buy the product for it to be profitable for his visitors. for sometimes the visuals from these are for us personally. this was the only way we could get around agricultural policy and price dumping in the milk market. in that respect, it's the only alternative coming from and the only way the get in family can ensure their dear a farm survives. there are no scientific studies that prove a 2 mochas more digestible, but the market exists. you can buy it in

a number of countries. that's all for now. thank you for joining us. for morning grossing stories about science and technology visit, our website will be back next week with a fresh edition of tomorrow today. until then, by it

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this is live from berlin. thousands of donald trump supporters gather in washington to rally against the results of this month's u.s. presidential election. they say it was stolen through voting fraud, also coming up. fears of a civil war brides in ethiopia as thousands are displaced. the government accuses rebel forces in the northern region of firing rockets into other parts of the country.