Recycling Plastics

 Start with a plastic-eating bacterium, add a little chemistry artificial intelligence and you get an enzyme that can decompose PET plastics back to monomers that can be use to rebuild new plastics. That's what I call recycling. Landfills may be mined in the future for feed stock. What could it mean if plastics become fully renewable?

the team developed a machine learning model that could predict which mutations in a PETase enzyme would afford it these capabilities. This involved closely studying a range of PET plastic products, including containers, water bottles and fabrics, and then using the model to design and engineer a new and improved enzyme dubbed FAST-PETase (functional, active, stable and tolerant PETase).

With the ability to quickly break down post-consumer plastic waste at low temperatures, the researchers believe they have landed on a technique that is portable, affordable and able to be adopted on an industrial scale. They have filed a patent for the technology and hope to see it put to use in landfills and polluted areas.

“The possibilities are endless across industries to leverage this leading-edge recycling process,” said Alper. “Beyond the obvious waste management industry, this also provides corporations from every sector the opportunity to take a lead in recycling their products. Through these more sustainable enzyme approaches, we can begin to envision a true circular plastics economy.”