Scientists
Accidentally Discovered A Plastic Eating Enzyme
That Could Revolutionize
Recycling (HBO)
108,714
views
May
13, 2018
VICE
News
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An
international team of scientists have accidentally enhanced a plastic eating
enzyme in a discovery that could change our relationship with plastic forever.
The breakthrough, if scaled up, could lead to plastic being broken down into
its original components and formed into plastic items again, removing the need
for making more of the material.
With
over 1 million plastic bottles sold a minute and at the current rate plastic
set to outweigh fish in the oceans by 2050, plastic pollution is an
environmental menace that has been dubbed a 'planetary crisis' by the United
Nations. Despite the huge challenge,
Professor
John McGeehan who headed the research believes the findings could turn the
tide, "I think there's been a huge amount of doom and gloom stories around
plastics and justifiably because it's a terrible environmental scourge. But
this is a story where we've got some hope that we can actually put
together."
The
research was based on a 2016 discovery in a waste facility in Japan of a
bacterium that had evolved to eat plastic. During the teams attempt to
understand the how the enzyme evolved they made alterations which inadvertently
led to the enzyme eating plastic 20% faster than before.
VICE
News travels to the seaside city of Portsmouth in the UK to meet the man behind
the discovery and what it might mean for a world being poisoned by plastic.
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