Plastic waste will become a thing of the past. This enzyme will break them down in no time

Environmentalists have been sounding the alarm for years to make it meaningful Reducing the production and use of plastic. While some companies are taking certain steps in this direction, for example offering straws or paper cups, we can come across every day a large number of Products in plastic containers. Even if all of humanity immediately abandoned the production of plastic, this is how it still exists on our planet Tons of plastic waste. Scientists are constantly working to solve this problem.

The hack may be the latest discovery It will greatly accelerate the decomposition of plastic. It is located around a special enzyme It will shorten the decomposition time of the polymer Several hundred years ago. According to its creators, it can be used to clean places contaminated with plastic.

Scientists have done enzyme test On products created with Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) And the effects are amazing. It usually takes hundreds of years for plastic packaging to completely degrade. The enzyme speeds up this process and Most polymer products It was distributed over the course of a week, and in individual cases it took only 24 hours.

Scientists named their method fast pitas, That is, pitas are functional, active, stable and tolerant. They managed to create natural PETase enzymeAllows bacteria to degrade plastic and then modify it for use Artificial intelligence with machine learningwhich identified five enabling mutations faster decomposition of plastic under different environmental conditions.

A new enzyme made by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin may emerge A revolution in recycling. The enzyme breaks the plastic down into basic molecular units that scientists can re-polymerize. Thanks to this, it will not be necessary to mass-produce plastic, as companies will be able to use this from recycling.