A New Enzyme Found in Compost Just Set a Speed Record For Breaking Down Plastic

[Judi Lynn]

Carly Cassella - Yesterday 1:00 PM

A plastic container thrown into landfill can take hundreds of years to break down naturally, but a newly discovered enzyme could eat up the waste in less than a day.

The highly efficient polyester hydrolase, known as PHL7, was recently found in a German cemetery munching through compost.

In the lab, researchers found it was able to decompose polyethylene terephthalate (PET) by 90 percent within 16 hours.

PHL7 isn't the first natural 'plastic eater' discovered by scientists, but it is the fastest.

In 2016, a PET-guzzling enzyme, called LLC, was found at a recycling plant in Japan. In the years since, it's been heralded as a gold-standard plastic chomper. But the newly found PHL7 is two times faster at the job.

More:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/a-new-enzyme-found-in-compost-just-set-a-speed-record-for-breaking-down-plastic/ar-AAXtXRJ

[3Hotdogs]

1. What is the end product of digested plastic?

Oil? Or smaller plastic?

[bucolic_frolic]

2. "new plastic can be produced from the decomposition products."

From the article. So yeah, what good is more raw material to make plastic? Maybe the loop can be reduced, but it's not like it becomes, soil, fertilizer, energy.

[Scrivener7]

3. The article isn't entirely clear. My fear was that it would increase the amount of microplastic

that is everywhere and growing.

Though the article doesn't really say yes or no, that doesn't seem to be a concern.

It's good news, but I would also like to see campaigns to stop the use of plastic. We are already knee deep. It's already killing the oceans. It was only a short time ago that it didn't exist, and we can go back to that if we had the will to do so.

[Bayard]

4. Found in a German cemetery.......

So, there is a pile of composting plastic in a graveyard? This has The Walking Dead written all over it.