March 12, 2016

Plastic-Eating Bacteria Could Help Revolutionize Recycling

Plastic-Eating Bacteria Could Help Revolutionize Recycling

Growing mounds of plastic waste are not only eyesores but also environmental hazards. A new strain of bacteria might help us dispose of them for good. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

We all know the drill: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Except, of course, that by and large Malaysians continue to be laggards when it comes to recycling. Only a mere 15% of solid waste was collected for recycling all of last year. Perhaps a solution to all those growing mounds of non-biodegradable plastic bottles, containers and bags around the nation can come from an unlikely source: bacteria.

A team of researchers at Kyoto University report in an article in Science magazine that they have isolated a strain of bacteria that can “break down and metabolize plastic.” That’s right: they have found bacteria that love to chow down plastic. The Japanese researchers spent five years examining 250 samples taken from a plastic-recycling facility in the Japanese city of Sakai before they isolated a new species of bacteria – Ideonella sakaiensis – that could live on the most common type of polyester, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is widely used in bottles, containers, packages, synthetic clothing and other consumer products.

It isn’t the first time that plastic-eating microbes have been discovered and hailed as the potential new heroes of our rubbish-strewn planet. During an expedition to the Amazon a group of researchers from Yale University in the US discovered a fungus, pestalotiopsis microspora, that can break down polyurethane, a commonly used industrial plastic. They reported their findings in a 2012 article in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. However, the fungi would be hard to cultivate at an industrial scale, which would make them unsuitable for the large-scale disposal of plastic waste.

A newly discovered strain of bacteria can break down PET. Photo Credit: Science Magazine

A newly discovered strain of bacteria can break down PET. Photo Credit: Science Magazine

Not so with the newly discovered bacteria. All the Japanese scientists needed to do was leave the bacteria in a warm jar along with polyethylene terephthalate and some other nutrients, and within a few weeks they disposed of all the plastic without a trace. Plastics have been around for 70-odd years and that has been enough for Ideonella sakaiensis to have evolved the ability to produce an enzyme for breaking down and digesting PET. Better yet, the researchers have been able to produce the same enzyme on their own for breaking down PET even without the help of the bacteria.

Needless to say, all this is very good news indeed. Some 300 million tons of plastic are manufactured each year around the world, and much of it ends up in landfills, garbage dumps and floating around in oceans. Traditional methods of recycling plastic involve melting and reshaping old plastics into new products, but the newly found bacteria could revolutionize waste disposal. “The PET-digesting enzymes offer a way to truly recycle plastic,” notes Mark Lorch, a senior lecturer in biological chemistry at the University of Hull in England. “They could be added to vats of waste, breaking all the bottles or other plastic items down into easy-to-handle chemicals. These could then be used to make fresh plastics, producing a true recycling system.”

 

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