The promises and problems of using bacteria to get rid of plastic

During her time in a drug discovery lab, structural biologist Kavyashree Manjunath first started thinking about how much plastic her group used, even for a single experiment. “I thought, ‘can these enzymes be engineered to break down PET much faster so that it can be used at a large scale in the industry?’” Manjunath said. “Polyolefins have one of the toughest carbon-carbon bonds to break, so we were really fascinated that this one microbe can do all three major plastic types,” Punthambaker said. “Ideally the plastic will either last longer or you could use less plastic because it’s a better product.” However, he thinks consumer acceptance could be a challenge. “Because the less you load, the more expensive it becomes, so you have to make sure the technology is able to handle large quantities of PET waste at a given time.” Another major challenge is to make sure the enzymes can degrade different kinds of PET waste — even the highly crystalline variety.