While major oil spills get all the headlines, they only account for 5.24 percent of oil pollution in our oceans. The big polluters are your everyday Joe Shmo who dumps oils and oil products down stormdrains -- 363 million gallons to be exact. That's over 54 percent of the total oil pollution in our waters.
Cleaning the crud up has proven to be difficult, but according to a post on Treehugger, a new company may have finally come up with a clean solution. BioPetroClean, with the help of Prof. Eugene Rosenberg from Tel Aviv University, have found and isolated a particular strain of oil-munching bacteria. A few pilot sites are now using the technology in Israel.
“Israel won't be bacteria incubators for the universe - we would rather link to service providers across the universe. This would give better service and more oil contamination clean-up possibilities," says BioPetroClean CEO David Amir.
A commenter on Treehugger claims that a French company already developed such a microorganism and a press releasefrom 2005 confirms that, but when I tried to go to the company's product site it wouldn't load. Maybe their bacteria went solar.
