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Hi there! Today I want to talk to you all about an exciting new technology: plastic eating enzymes. Oooooohhhh. Ahhhhhh. Although this may sound like something out of a science fiction novel, this new invention shows promise in helping reduce pollution.
If you think about it, just about everything we do involves some form of plastic. Plastic is so ingrained within our culture that we don’t even notice it anymore. For example, did you know that glitter, chewing gum and even cigarettes all contain plastic?
For this reason, it is unlikely that plastic is going away, prompting some huge challenges that we will need to overcome. Plastic can take anywhere from 100 to 1,000+ years to decompose, causing it to be extremely persistent in our environment.
Although some plastic can be recycled, only about 10% of plastic worldwide ends up in a recycling plant. In addition, plastic can only be recycled a few times before it loses its quality, and new plastic has to be added each time to maintain elasticity.
All of this plastic piles up, notably in areas such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which covers an area twice the size of Texas and is made up almost entirely of plastic.
Obviously, this is not good for the environment. Many animal species can get tangled up in it, or confuse the plastic for food, which can cause suffocation. More than 1,500 species were found to consume plastics.
The creation of plastic also requires immense fossil fuels, making up around 3.4% of global greenhouse emissions.
As a result of these issues, it has become increasingly dire to find a solution to prevent plastic pollution. Luckily, scientists from all over the world are working to solve this issue and have come across a promising solution: plastic eating enzymes.
There are two main enzymes that are used in the degradation of plastic: PETase and MHETase, both of which were discovered in the bacteria Ideonella sakaiensis, for those who like the scientific mumbo-jumbo.
PETase and MHETase work specifically with PET plastic, one of the most common forms of plastic, found in food packaging, water bottles and polyester.
Plastics are polymers, aka long chains of macromolecules with repeating smaller units called monomers. These enzymes function by breaking down the long polymers into individual monomers.
These enzymes were discovered in 2016, so we have had them for a while. However, recent advancements have made them more efficient and easier to work with.
In 2020, French scientists created a new type of enzyme that can break down 90% of a plastic water bottle in only 10 hours, which is far faster than the normal 100+ years degradation time of regular plastic.
Not only do these enzymes reduce plastic waste, but they also help recycle plastic in a more sustainable way. Since the plastics are broken down into their original form, they can be recycled much easier without losing their elasticity.
Although this new method of degradation is extremely exciting, we still have a long way to go.
For one, this innovation isn’t really scalable right now. For the most part, it’s still relatively slow and inefficient, with narrow specificity for only certain plastics.
Temperature is also a large constraint as the enzymes only function at a specific temperature, making it hard to deploy in an actual ecosystem.
Also, since this technology is so new, we aren’t entirely sure of the side effects it could create on the environment. Choosing to spray it widely throughout land or marine ecosystems to devour plastic could end up making the problem worse than it was when we started, wreaking havoc on countless ecosystems.
However, it is important to remember that we have top scientists currently working on fixing all of these things. Enterprises like Carbios are hard at work developing the next strand of plastic-eating enzymes that maybe will be the solution.
Until then, I plan to continue to stick to reusable materials in order to reduce plastic waste as much as possible. I encourage you to do the same until magical enzymes can swoop it and chomp down on your takeout containers!
Elena