Plastic-eating enzyme could eliminate billions of tons of landfill waste

Re:Plastic-eating enzyme could eliminate billions of tons of... by lkbm on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @05:13PM (#31427748)

The article talks about using it for environmental cleanup, but the paper seems more focused on recycling back into fresh PET[0]:

> ...and a circular carbon economy for PET is theoretically attainable through rapid enzymatic depolymerization followed by repolymerization or conversion/valorization into other products

> Finally, we demonstrate a closed-loop PET recycling process by using FAST-PETase and resynthesizing PET from the recovered monomers. Collectively, our results demonstrate a viable route for enzymatic plastic recycling at the industrial scale.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04599-z

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Re:Plastic-eating enzyme could eliminate billions of tons of... by ncmncm on Thursday May 19, 2022 @01:22AM (#31431073)

I used to think burying plastic in landfills for carbon sequestration was a good idea. Then I found out that making plastic releases an enormous amount of CO2.

Thus, successful recycling of plastic would mean less new plastic being made, and less emission. Before renewables, petroleum not made into plastic would instead be burned as fuel. But now, or soon, maybe it will be left in the ground, instead, as not worth pumping out. It is better to leave carbon sequestered where it is than to extract and then sequester it.

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