[(Title)] How a humble Australian bee could help the world's plastic problem.

There's a buzz among researchers across the Tasman as they recruit native Australian bees to fight the war on waste by helping create a new bioplastic.

澳大利亚塔斯曼的研究人员搜集澳大利亚当地的蜜蜂，试图研发新的生物塑料来解决塑料污染问题。

The biotech start-up Humble Bee aims to take the nesting material from Banksia bees to produce a water-repellent and flame-resistant form of natural plastic.

生物技术初创企业Humble Bee的目标是采用班克西亚（Banksia）蜂的筑巢材料，生产出防水和阻燃的天然塑料。

The New Zealand-based company is attempting to reverse engineer the material to create a biodegradable alternative on an industrial scale.

这家总部位于新西兰的公司正在尝试对材料进行逆向工程，以便在工业规模上创造出可生物降解的替代品。

Founder and chief executive Veronica Harwood-Stevenson has been collecting Banksia bees (Hylius nubilosus) in south-east Queensland with the help of Chris Fuller from Kin Kin Native Bees.

创始人兼首席执行官Veronica Harwood-Stevenson一直在昆士兰州东南部收集班克西亚蜜蜂。

Her work involved trying to understand the cellophane-like bioplastic that lines the bees' nest.

她的工作涉及试图了解蜜蜂巢的玻璃纸状生物塑料。

"They're a small black bee, and if you keep an eye out for them you can see them in your backyards," she told ABC Radio Brisbane's Emma Griffiths.

她说：“它们是只小黑蜜蜂，如果你盯着他们，你可以看到它们的后院，”

"Chris supplies stingless bees to the macadamia industry, so his great knowledge on what material to do analysis on has helped us start."

“克里斯给麦达米亚工业供应少许蜜蜂，所以他在这方面丰富的知识帮助我们选择研究的材料。”

Ms Harwood-Stevenson said the idea came about when she was doing research on different science disciplines.

Harwood-Stevenson女士说，当她对其他科学学科进行研究时，这个想法就出现了。

"I have a strong interest in biology and I read an article on native bees and this bee lines its nests with material that looked promising," she said.

她说：“我对生物学的兴趣很浓厚，我读了一篇关于当地蜜蜂的文章，它们用来筑巢的材料很有研究潜力。

"The author of the article made a throwaway comment that it behaved liked a plastic, and I knew that packaging was a leading cause of plastic pollution so I thought this could be part of the solution."

这篇文章作者发表了自己的看法，认为这种筑巢材料和塑料十分相似，我意识到这可能是解决塑料污染的一种途径。

Along with a team of scientists, Ms Harwood-Stevenson said the aim was to make the product biologically.

Harwood-Stevenson女士和一组科学家表示，他们的目的是在制造出这种生物产品。

Phil Lester, an entomologist and professor of biological science at Victoria University of Wellington, has been helping study the bees.

惠灵顿维多利亚大学昆虫学家和生物科学教授菲尔·莱斯特（PhilLester）一直在帮助研究蜜蜂。

By examining their DNA, the researchers hope to identify the genes that give the bees the ability to make the special bioplastic.

通过检测它们的DNA，研究人员希望识别能够使蜜蜂能够制造特殊生物塑料的基因。

"We will do a similar thing to how insulin was made in the 1970s — the gene that coded insulin was put into an E. coli bacteria and could then be produced en masse," Ms Harwood-Stevenson said.

Harwood-Stevenson女士说：“我们将会做与70年代胰岛素生产方式类似的事情，也就是将胰岛素编码的基因放入大肠杆菌中，然后可以进行大量生产。

"We're not going to use the actual bee but the genetics of that bee to learn from.

“我们不会用蜜蜂本身，而是用蜜蜂的基因。

"You can't take biological material in its entirety from Australia into New Zealand, so we did a dissection in Queensland and brought the parts of the bee we were interested in back to New Zealand.

“你不能将整个生物材料从澳大利亚带到新西兰，所以我们在昆士兰进行了解剖，并将我们感兴趣的蜜蜂部分带回新西兰。

"Any further work we do will be back in Australia due to the biological difficulty of going between the two countries."

“由于两国之间存在生物学上的困难，我们所做的任何进一步工作都将回到澳大利亚。”

She said New Zealand didn't have the native bee expertise or husbandry, which prompted her to travel to Australia.

她说新西兰没有本地蜜蜂的专业知识或饲养，这促使她前往澳大利亚。

"We had people in New Zealand who had done a lot of research, but where you could go to find them [the bees] was something that Australia had that we didn't."

"我们在新西兰的人做了很多研究，但是这些蜜蜂只能在澳大利亚寻找到。

Despite being in its early stages, Ms Harwood-Stevenson said creating a bioplastic was within reach.

尽管Harwood-Stevenson女士的研究处于早期阶段，但她说，生产生物塑料是有可能实现的。

"Plastic pollution is a very complex and a massive problem and we think [this] could be part of the solution," she said.

她说：“塑料污染是一个非常复杂和巨大的问题，我们认为这可能是解决问题的其中一个途径。

"Plastic is a word that is like sport or religion; it encompasses so many different types of chemistry and so many materials with many properties and uses."

“塑料是一个像体育或宗教这样的词汇；它包括如此多的不同类型的化学以及如此多的具有许多特性和用途的材料。

Ms Harwood-Stevenson said a form of plastic would always be needed, not for single-use items, but for many industries it was a material that could not be substituted out.

Harwood-Stevenson说，对于许多行业来说，某一种塑料产品是必要且不可取代的。

"It has performance properties that make it important in many industries and you can't just stop using it, given today's society and the technology that we rely on."

它的性能特性使得它在许多行业都很重要，而且考虑到现在的技术，人们不可能停止使用塑料。

She said she hoped this form of bioplastic could fill the gap across industries and would like to see the material ready to sell in five years.

她说，她希望这种生物塑料能弥补各行业之间的空白，并希望看到这种生物材料能在五年内投入市场。