The problem that the world has been facing due to plastics isn’t anything new to all of us. According to the United Nations Environment Program, the production of plastics has reached 8.3 billion tonnes since the 1950s, and about 60% of which has ended up in either landfill or natural environment. Even though there have always been experiments in order to curb plastic pollution, we haven’t reached any concrete answers. The chart from the United States Environment Protection Agency, highlights the change in plastic waste management between 1960-2017 and it shows that there hasn’t been any significant positive change, it has been the contrary in fact.
This breakthrough of creating the super enzyme could be the change the world needed. As reported by VICE media, “this is done by a team of researchers who re-engineered a plastic-eating enzyme in 2018. They have now combined it with a second enzyme to make it have major implications for the recycling of bottles, clothing, and all other commonly found waste.” In a study published in the scientific journal PNAS, the researchers have stated that the enzyme by combining two separate enzymes—a plastic-eating enzyme named PETase and the new enzyme called MHETase.
While talking to the Guardian, Prof John McGeehan, from the University of Portsmouth, UK said that this was one of the cases that learned from nature and produced it in the lab. He also said, “When we linked the enzymes, rather unexpectedly, we got a dramatic increase in the activity. This is a trajectory towards trying to make faster enzymes that are more industrially relevant.” The search of such enzyme has been on for years, the first breakthrough happened when the Japanese had discovered a bug that hat lived on plastic trash mounds. The bug literally ate the material and disconnected the polymers of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), one of the most common plastics used in making water bottles. These enzymes were found in the same bug. In 2018, researchers that delivered the first enzyme that performed the same activity but that took days, the super enzyme works it’s way six times faster!
This could be our hope for a world free of plastic pollution!
I love your videos and your posts, they’re always so informative! Who would’ve thought a plastic eating enzyme would become a thing, I think that’s amazing especially with all the pollution we have with plastic bottles.
This is such an important topic given the state of our landfills and oceans. Hopefully these enzymes can be part of the solution. Really important topic.