Newly engineered enzyme can break down plastic to raw materials The resulting chemicals can be used to make brand-new bottles. John Timmer – Apr 8, 2020 3:59 pm | 107 ...

Method efficiently breaks down plastic bottles into component parts. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 2, 2025 from www.sciencedaily.com / releases / 2022 / 04 / 220412140940.htm. Northwestern University.

Researchers working for industrial development company Carbios have created a mutant bacterial enzyme that can break down plastic bottles for recycling in only a couple of hours, according to The ...

Method efficiently breaks down plastic bottles into component parts Researchers first to demonstrate use of metal-organic frameworks to degrade plastics ...

PET was first developed in the 1940s, and the first living organism that can break down and use the carbon in PET was described in 2016—found in sediment near a plastic recycling facility ...

Commonly used in food packaging and beverage bottles, PET plastics represent 12% of total plastics used globally. Because it does not break down easily, PET is a major contributor to plastic ...

Used plastic bottles are seen at a waste collection point in Tokyo, Japan, November 21, 2018. Toru Hanai/Reuters ... this new creation breaks plastic down six times faster.

Everything from soda bottles to food containers to even some clothes contains PET plastics. ... The newly discovered enzyme is capable of breaking down plastic at temperatures under 50 degrees ...

It worked on plastic bottles, T-shirts and colored plastics, breaking them down into pure, colorless TPA. "It worked perfectly," Kratish said. "When we added extra water, it stopped working ...

Fungi could be the answer to breaking down plastic junk ... some species of fungi that can break down polyethylene—the same type of plastic used for bags, bottles, cling wrap, takeout ...

In a proof of concept, a new mutant enzyme was used to break down a ton of waste plastic bottles to the point where they were 90% degraded in only 10 hours.

Plastics have a lot of properties that have made them fixtures of modern societies. They can be molded into any shape we'd like, they're tough yet flexible, and they come in enough variations that ...