Imagine the experience of a lump of mushrooms popping up in a jar full of grain. Although mushrooms are commonplace and not particularly tempting or exciting, But it's great to have found that in this particular experiment! Because the fungus gobbles up the plastic sponge used to fill the jar and then breaks it down, just like it would any other food. The goal of this research project was to evaluate the use of some strains of the fungus to make bioban-based heat shields, but the hungry fungus had a breakthrough in the other direction. — Ability to digest plastic material skillfully.

Currently, Biohm Biomanufacturing is working on developing this strain of fungus to make it a more effective digester that may help us better dispose of plastic waste.

It's no secret that dealing with single-use plastic waste is a serious environmental problem. According to Greenpeace statistics, by 2015, 6.3 billion tons of virgin plastic had been produced worldwide, of which only 9% was recycled, with the rest burned in incinerators or discarded.

However, the situation is gradually improving, and more than 40% of plastic packaging in the EU is now recycled, with a goal of reaching 50% by 2025. But some types of plastic, such as PET (polyethylene terephthalate), which is widely used in beverage bottles, are difficult to recycle through traditional methods, so might biological approaches find relevant answers?

Researchers are currently testing the reactions of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyurethane in a fungus. Put these plastic materials with the fungus, and the fungus eats the plastic, and as the fungus grows, it makes more fungus, which can then be used to make biological material, or animal feed, or antibiotics.

Scientists from the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom recently used laboratory-engineered E. coli bacteria to extract molecules from ethylene terephthalate and convert them into terephthalic acid in a series of chemical reactions to become vanillin, a cooking seasoning.

The research is still in its early stages, and more work is needed to find ways to make the process more efficient and economically viable. This is a very exciting starting point, with the potential for commercial applications in the future following further improvements to the process.

Meanwhile, a research team at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany is using a bacterium originally found in a local rubbish dump to break down polyurethane. The bacterium, called Pseudomonas, consumes about half of the plastic to increase its biomass, while the rest is converted into the form of carbon dioxide. Like other plastic-eating organisms, Pseudomonas uses enzymes to break down polyurethane, and the team has now performed a genomic analysis of the bacteria with the aim of identifying the specific genes encoded by these enzymes.

But some researchers have questioned whether such technology is commercially viable. The conversion of PET into other components by enzymes or microorganisms is an interesting science that needs further analysis, but the technology will have to compete with well-established commercial conversion techniques for water catalyst systems that are currently in common use.

Perhaps the best path to commercialization right now is by a French company, Carbios, which recently claimed to have produced the world's first food-grade PET plastic bottle made entirely from enzyme-recycled plastic. Unlike most recycling methods, the enzyme can also process colored PET material.

Based on this new technology, any kind of PET plastic waste can be recycled into any type of PET product. However, the cost of bottles made with this method is almost twice that of traditional petrochemical production, but this technology still has great potential to compete with the low cost of traditional plastic bottles.

Enzyme substances can be very useful because they are highly functional, and they can deal with contaminated environments if the packaging is still dirty, and they do not use a lot of energy. In addition, enzymes can be scaled up and down very easily, enzymes have the advantage that they can be made up of small units with low carbon footprints, and they are used in developing countries or more remote areas.

However, this technology is not a "panacea". PET bottles can be recycled to make new bottles using this enzyme, but PET bottles are resistant to the degradation of the enzyme, so an additional pretreatment mechanism must be introduced, which uses a lot of extra energy to melt the plastic and reduce the crystallization of the material. So you can use the enzyme to degrade the plastic, but it doesn't make much sense from an economic point of view and from a carbon footprint point of view.

Now, although things may be improving, the scope of enzymatic recycling is very limited. The latest technology that has been developed is only used to completely degrade two types of polyester, which means that about 75 million tons of polyester can be degraded every year, and global plastic production is about 350 million tons, so we have a lot of work to do!