Scientists Accidentally Develop Enzyme which Breaks Down Plastic!

Plastic waste and pollution from used and discarded plastic composites is quickly becoming one of the most alarming natural and environmental hazards due to the fact that plastic is notoriously difficult to breakdown; it can take more than 400 years for plastic to biodegrade.

The amount of this material used and consumed every day is absolutely staggering with 299 million plastic bottles produced in 2013 and today more than one million plastic bottles are being purchased by the minute!

According to National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, more than 8 million tons of plastic waste ends up in the ocean every year

A Global Epidemic

For the past five decades, the production of plastic has steadily increased mainly due to the fact that plastic is relatively cheap, strong, and multifaceted in its industrial and consumer applications. According to research by scientists at National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), most of our plastic waste ends up in the oceans; that’s a monumental 8 million metric tons of waste plastic every single year and it is projected that this number could be increased by up to 20 times by the year 2025.

This plastic is usually washed up on shores or is carried by the ocean currents which has led to the endangerment of marine life and birds who end up ingesting plastic composites which can be deadly. Most of the plastic bottles in the world are made from PET, a plastic composite that is fairly easy to recycle, which is why it’s a shame that more than half of the world’s PET waste is not collected for recycling purposes with only 7 percent of the world’s plastic bottles eventually being recycled.

 Plastic fragments end up inside the animals’ bodies where they release toxic chemicals which can cause severe harm to marine life and our ecology

Even though large plastic bottles and composites can be observed washed up on the beaches and shores around the world, toxicologists are emphasizing the importance of small fragments known as micro plastics which are formed by the breakdown of plastic materials. These micro plastics can be accidentally ingested by animals including fish, birds, tortoise and other aquatic marine life since they resemble bite-sized meals.

Scientists Make a Breakthrough

A team of Japanese scientists, funded by the University of Portsmouth had been studying an enzyme, known as PETase, which is cable of breaking down plastic. The scientists had been studying the molecular and chemical structure of this enzyme to comprehend how the process of plastic degradation takes place when they accidentally engineered an enzyme that was capable of breaking down plastic at a much faster rate and in a more effective manner.

This discovery was made by a group of British and American scientists who were analyzing the enzyme found by Japanese researchers by breaking down it’s molecular and atomic composition using X-ray. By exposing the enzyme to intense X-ray beams that were 10 billion times brighter than the sun, the scientists were able to separate and observe its atomic composition and during the process of restructuring its composition, they unintentionally engineered a mutant enzyme that was much more effective at degrading the plastic composites like PET (polyethylene terephthalate) which is one of the most commonly-used plastic polymer in the world.

Many big companies like Coca Cola have taken the initiative to reduce plastic littering and have committed to recycling 50 percent of plastic bottles by 2020

The Future Prospect of Our Oceans

The revolutionary discovery has led scientists to believe that there is further room for improvement and development in order to come up with a feasible recycling solution that is suitable for industry applications to be adopted by plastic manufacturers since the discovery of this enzyme alone is not enough to combat and fix our global recycling problems.

Many of the world’s biggest plastic manufacturers have taken initiatives to promote recycling of plastic and companies like Coca Cola, which produces more than 100 billion plastic bottles every year, have committed to recycling up to 50 percent of their bottles by the year 2020.

Scientists acknowledge that there is still a long way to go in order to comprehensibly combat the global epidemic of plastic pollution but, this is certainly a step in the right direction and has paved the way for extensive research in enzymes and protein engineering to formulate more effective enzymes in the future.