Quantcast
ZME Science
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Features
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact
No Result
View All Result
ZME Science

No Result
View All Result
ZME Science
No Result
View All Result
Home Environment

Fast-acting enzyme can break down plastic in as little as 24 hours

The researchers said the new enzyme has the potential to “supercharge” recycling on a large scale.

Fermin Koop by Fermin Koop
April 29, 2022
in Environment, Environmental Issues, News, Science
Reading Time: 4 mins read
A A
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterSubmit to Reddit

Using enzymes to break down plastic waste is a new approach gaining a lot of momentum, with a set of recent breakthroughs showing that enzymes can reduce plastic to simple molecules. Now, in a new study, researchers have found an enzyme variant that can degrade PET plastics in a matter of hours to days — and stable enough to be adopted on a large scale.

Image credit: Pxhere.

The discovery could help tackle the world’s escalating plastic waste crisis, which is polluting the oceans and filling up landfills. Half of the plastics ever produced have been made in the last 15 years, and production is expected to double by 2050. They are truly everywhere, from Everest to Antarctica to the food we eat daily. Having a way to quickly break down and recycle plastic could make a big difference.

“The possibilities are endless across industries to leverage this leading-edge recycling process,” Hal Alper, study author from the University of Texas at Austin, said in a statement. “Beyond the waste management industry, this also provides corporations from every sector the opportunity to take a lead in recycling their products.”

Tackling the plastic crisis

Alper and his team focused on PET plastic (polyethylene terephthalate), a polymer that is mainly used for consumer packagings, such as bottles and containers, and for certain fibers and textiles. In 2016, researchers came up with an enzyme (PETase) that could break down PET plastic in weeks, a time frame that was then further improved six times in 2020.

ADVERTISEMENT

Now, the researchers at the University of Texas wanted to further improve the use of the technology – which they believed has been held back by an inability to work well at low temperatures and at different pH ranges. They came up with a machine learning model and use it to create a new and improved enzyme named FAST-PETase that’s much more robust than previous iterations.

Get more science news like this...

Join the ZME newsletter for amazing science news, features, and exclusive scoops. More than 40,000 subscribers can't be wrong.

   

This new enzyme was better at breaking down PET plastic at a range of pH levels and at temperatures between 30 and 50 °C (86 and 122 Fahrenheit). It could almost degrade entire 51 different PET products in a week, and in some experiments in 24 hours. The enzyme could also do a circular process of breaking down the plastic and then putting it back together.

The enzyme won’t be released into the wild anytime soon. Instead, it could be used to “supercharge” plastic recycling on a large scale, allowing industries to reduce their environmental footprint by recovering and reusing plastics. It’s portable, affordable, and can be adopted on a large scale. They have already filed for a patent for this technology and hope to soon implement it in landfills and polluted areas.

ADVERTISEMENT

Recycling is one the most obvious ways to reduce plastic waste (the other one being to simply use less), but globally less than 10% of all plastic gets recycled. That’s when we turn to landfills or burning, which is energy-intensive and costly. Biological alternatives such as enzymes require much less energy, but until now no one had figured out how to make enzymes work at low temperatures to make them more efficient.

“When considering environmental cleanup applications, you need an enzyme that can work in the environment at ambient temperature. This requirement is where our tech has a huge advantage in the future,” Alper concludes.

The study was published in the journal Nature.

Tags: plastic
ShareTweetShare
Fermin Koop

Fermin Koop

Fermin Koop is a reporter from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He holds an MSc from Reading University (UK) on Environment and Development and is specialized in environment and climate change news.

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Features
  • More

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Features
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.