A photo from open sources
Plastic waste has become a real disaster for our planet, moreover, all efforts to process them stumble upon two insoluble problems: it is expensive, that is, economically disadvantageous, and environmentally friendly. However, scientists seem to have finally found a solution to such an important problem for our world, and we found by chance. As they say, God himself helped them in this.
In 2016, Japanese researchers found bacteria in a landfill, who coped well with recycling plastic bottles. Instead of the century that is required for complete destruction plastic, these bacteria took only a few days – phenomenal, isn’t it!
Now the main thing for scientists was to identify the structure of the enzyme, which these bacteria used and then try synthesize it. Recently, many scientists have been doing this. countries of the world. And here is the long-awaited victory.
Researchers at Portsmouth University United The kingdoms recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences article on its astounding achievements in resolving this issue. Here is what writes about it Professor John McGeehan:
We created an enzyme that can degrade plastic. More in addition, we got a substance that copes with PET bottles and other polyethylene terephthalate products are much more effective than a natural original produced by bacteria. It’s real discovery of the century! Our enzyme allows you to quickly decompose plastic into components that can then be used for production new similar products. And this means that you do not need to spend on the production of plastic containers fossil, that is, oil, is enough recycle existing debris on the planet. And we are sure that the process of decomposition of plastic can be significantly to increase.
The enzyme created by British scientists is non-toxic and biodegradable, and with the help of microorganisms it can be obtained in huge quantities at minimal cost.
By the way, in parallel with this discovery, another thing was done, almost very similar to the previous one. One day one of researchers of the Spanish Institute of Biomedicine Federica Bertochini, an amateur beekeeper, engaged in removal parasites from the hive, found that wax moth larvae (which she put in a plastic bag and the next day could not find) capable of destroying plastic with astonishing speed. As shown further experiments conducted by Spanish scientists, only a hundred of such larvae capable of cracking down on almost 100 in 12 hours kilograms of plastic waste.
So, it turns out that our civilization is on the verge of easy and efficient recycling of plastic, which today is turning oceans and dry land of the Earth into real landfills. That’s just will it really work (and not on the pages of scientific journals, it’s enough to recall in this case similar enthusiasm about biodegradable plastic) remove these landfills and not create new ones? What do you think?..
Plastic
