Fighting microplastics for a cleaner future

Dr. Manish Shetty is working to break down microplastics to create usable fuel

13-Nov-2024 - Microplastics, plastics smaller than 5 millimeters, are littered across the world, contributing to global warming, disrupting food chains, and harming ecosystems with toxic chemicals. This is why Dr. Manish Shetty is working to break down plastics before they can get into the ...

CARBIOS celebrates the groundbreaking of its PET biorecycling plant

CARBIOS’ first plant is also a world first using revolutionary enzymatic depolymerization technology

29-Apr-2024 - CARBIOS, a pioneer in the development and industrialization of biological technologies to reinvent the life cycle of plastic and textiles, celebrated the groundbreaking ceremony for the world's first PET biorecycling plant in the presence of representatives of local authorities, partner brands ...

Bottled water can contain hundreds of thousands of previously uncounted tiny plastic bits

A new microscopic technique zeroes in on the poorly explored world of nanoplastics, which can pass into blood, cells and your brain

11-Jan-2024 - In recent years, there has been rising concern that tiny particles known as microplastics are showing up basically everywhere on Earth, from polar ice to soil, drinking water and food. Formed when plastics break down into progressively smaller bits, these particles are being consumed by humans ...

Boosting PET recycling with higher standards for laboratory experiments

New study shows how enzymatic plastic degradation could be brought one step closer to commercialisation

29-Nov-2023 - Many enzymes promise to break down plastic. But what works well in the lab often fails on a large scale. Now a new study by Gert Weber, HZB, Uwe Bornscheuer, University of Greifswald, and Alain Marty, Chief Scientific Officer of Carbios, shows how raising the bar for laboratory experiments could ...

Not so silver lining: Microplastics found in clouds could affect the weather

Low-altitude and denser clouds contained greater amounts of microplastics

23-Nov-2023 - From the depths of the seas to snow on mountains and even the air above cities, microplastics are turning up increasingly often. Now, in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology Letters, researchers have analyzed microplastics in clouds above mountains. They suggest that these tiny particles could ...

Plastic-eating bacteria turn waste into useful starting materials for other products

Microbial Upcycling of Waste PET

03-Nov-2023 - Mountains of used plastic bottles get thrown away every day, but microbes could potentially tackle this problem. Now, researchers in ACS Central Science report that they’ve developed a plastic-eating E. coli that can efficiently turn polyethylene terephthalate (PET) waste into adipic acid, which ...

Lego discards plan to build bricks from recycled plastic bottles

28-Sep-2023 - (dpa) Lego is saying goodbye to its plan to manufacture building blocks from recycled PET bottles. After several years of testing, the toy company from Billund, Denmark, has decided not to pursue this project any further. This was announced by a spokesman for the Lego Group in Scandinavia on ...

A taste for plastic

Discovered for the first time: New deep-sea enzyme breaks down PET plastic

27-Sep-2023 - Plastic pollution is increasingly affecting the health of coasts and oceans. One well-known problem is plastic bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate, or PET. A new study involving scientists from Professor Ruth Schmitz-Streit's research group at Kiel University has shown for the first ...

The future of recycling could one day mean dissolving plastic with electricity

The method it’s simple enough that you can watch the plastic break apart in front of your eyes

10-Jul-2023 - Chemists at the University of Colorado Boulder have developed a new way to recycle a common type of plastic found in soda bottles and other packaging. The team’s method relies on electricity and some nifty chemical reactions, and it’s simple enough that you can watch the plastic break apart in ...

New findings on the enzyme that breaks down PET plastic

Scientists increase efficiency: Start-up company in preparation

13-Apr-2023 - One of the most widely used plastics in the world is polyethylene terephthalate, or PET for short. It is everywhere in our daily lives in the form of reusable PET drinks bottles. At the end of the lifecycle of a product containing PET, the environmentally friendly reuse of the PET components ...