Scientists may have just solved the plastic crisis

From Country Living

Plastic has been in the news a lot in recent weeks, with the latest being a petition calling for crisp manufacturers to end their use of unrecyclable packets.

But by a stroke of good luck, British scientists may have just discovered a solution to help recycle single-use plastics.

A team of scientists from the UK have inadvertently produced a new and improved version of a plastic-digesting protein while investigating its natural counterpart. This newly-engineered enzyme, named PETase, could be the recycling saviour the environment needs.

Experiments on the protein revealed it had an enhanced ability to break down polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a type of plastic widely used within the food and drinks industries. This means that the plastic could be separated, recycled and reused.

According to the British Plastics Federation, 70% of soft drinks, mineral waters and fruit juices in shops and supermarkets are contained in bottles made from PET. Considering it takes hundreds of years to decompose, it’s clear this is far from good for the planet.

How did they do it?

Scientists from Portsmouth University teamed up with US researchers to carry out the tests. They fired incredibly strong X-ray beams at the PETase at the Diamond Light Source synchrotron facility in Harwell, Oxfordshire.

In doing so, they mutated an active region of the PETase molecule. The result was a new version of the protein with a heightened ability to break down plastic, in particular PET and polyethylene furandicarboxylate (PEF).

The UK team aren't the first to work on the plastic-consuming enzyme. It was researchers in Japan, based at a waste recycling centre, who originally found the bacteria that had evolved the ability to feed on plastic. The British researchers worked on the back of this finding.

“Serendipity often plays a significant role in fundamental scientific research, and our discovery here is no exception,” lead scientist Professor John McGeehan, from the University of Portsmouth, told Metro.

“Although the improvement is modest, this unanticipated discovery suggests that there is room to further improve these enzymes, moving us closer to a recycling solution for the ever-growing mountain of discarded plastics.

“The technology exists and it’s well within the possibility that in the coming years we will see an industrially viable process to turn PET and potentially other (plastic) substrates like PEF, PLA and PBS back to their original building blocks, so that they can be sustainably recycled.”

The findings of the research were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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