Highway Teams in the U.K. Are Using Fuel-Eating Bacteria to Clean Oil Spills — Details Here
This is an eco-friendly and waste-reducing solution to a long-standing issue.
Published Feb. 27 2025, 4:50 p.m. ET
You've likely experienced an environmental crisis, even if you didn't know it. According to harrowing statistics from the World Health Organization, roughly nine out of ten people breathe air containing a high level of pollutants. Similarly, a report from 2022 by California’s State Water Resources Control Board revealed that in the sunny U.S. state alone, nearly one million people could face long-term health conditions from drinking polluted water.
When human-caused crises such as oil spills occur, they create catastrophic damage and often linger, leaving animals and humans with disastrous results.
Thankfully, however, some innovative highway crews in the U.K. have invented a potential solution. Keep reading for everything you need to know about the micro-organisms that might save time, money, and the environment.
Highway crews in the U.K. are using fuel-eating bacteria to clean up oil spills.
On Feb. 26, 2025, the BBC reported that highway crews in the U.K., specifically Essex Highways, deal with 80 to 100 hazardous waste spills a year. They typically manage this issue with sand or other absorbent materials, but this process can close roads for three to six hours.
The solution these U.K. highway crews have found creates less waste, saves time, and is eco-friendly. The BBC reports that Fuel Spill Digester (FSD) turns spills into water and can re-open the road within an hour, depending on the spill's size.
No, it's not magic turning oil into water — it's micro-organisms! Per The BBC, "Once the micro-organisms are poured on the fuel, enzymes break down the fuel's harmful components while bacteria digest them."
The reason FSD is described is eco-friendly is because it has eliminated the need to dispose of contaminated absorbents.
Scientists have probed into fuel-eating microbes before.
In 2015, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s Office of Response and Restoration wrote an article on several species of marine bacteria that enjoy eating crude oil. The families of bacteria, including Marinobacter, Oceanospiralles, Pseudomonas, and Alkanivorax, eat compounds from petroleum as a part of their regular diet.
Scientists hoped this could lead to a breakthrough in "biodegradation," the word for removing oil from the ocean.
Similarly, in 2022, biologists in Valencia, Spain published a study about multiple species of fuel-hungry micro-organisms. Scientists took samples from their personal vehicles under the fuel filler lid and discovered multiple types of bacteria "hitching a ride," per Car and Driver. When analyzed in a lab, the scientists learned the bacteria could live in fuel samples and degrade them over time.
While the use of FSD is currently limited in the U.K., the Essex County Council is among the first local authorities to use it. The BBC reports that the council says FSD is cheaper than traditional absorbents as well.
Hopefully, this breakthrough in science will encourage other countries to experiment and find innovative solutions to human-created disasters ... besides the obvious.