Able to break down PET plastics in as little as 24 hours
Overview
Plastic waste poses an ecological challenge. There have been 8.3 billion metric tons of plastics produced—6 billion tons are waste. What do we do with this waste?
The long-term, sustainable solution is to find effective ways to break down the plastic into smaller parts and then rebuild new plastic products from those smaller parts. Chemical recycling creates environmentally harmful byproducts, and the applications of recycled plastic are limited because chemically recycled plastics do not match the material properties and quality of the original.
Enzymatic degradation of plastics offers a green and scalable alternative for plastics waste recycling. Enzymes can break plastic waste down to monomers which can then be repolymerized into plastic that is indistinguishable from the original. The enzymatic process makes it possible to establish a circular plastic economy.
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) accounts for 12% of global solid waste. PET can be environmentally sustainable if rapid enzymatic degradation becomes easily attainable and scalable. Currently available PET-degrading enzymes show promise but need better stability and increased activity in order to practically recycle PET at industrial scale.
Invention description
A team of researchers from The University of Texas at Austin led by Hal Alper, and including Andy Ellington and Nate Lynd, have engineered a PET-degrading enzyme to be more stable and work faster than any reported enzyme. The novel enzyme variant, FAST-PETase can break down PET plastics in as little as 24 hours. They have demonstrated that untreated, post-consumer PET plastics from more than 50 products, including commercial water bottles, can be almost completely degraded quickly and efficiently. FAST-PETase is a viable route for enzymatic plastic recycling at the industrial scale.
