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Enzymes’ Power for Plastics Degradation
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Researchers surveyed enzymes capable of degrading synthetic plastics, highlighting how biological catalysts—especially cutinases and laccases—can break down polymers like PET and polyurethane under mild conditions, offering a promising complement to mechanical and chemical recycling methods.
Plastics are everywhere in our modern way of living, and their production keeps increasing every year, causing major environmental concerns. Nowadays, the end-of-life management involves accumulation in landfills, incineration, and recycling to a lower extent. This ecological threat to the environment is inspiring alternative bio-based solutions for plastic waste treatment and recycling toward a circular economy. Over the past decade, considerable efforts have been made to degrade commodity plastics using biocatalytic approaches. Here, we provide a comprehensive review on the recent advances in enzyme-based biocatalysis and in the design of related biocatalytic processes to recycle or upcycle commodity plastics, including polyesters, polyamides, polyurethanes, and polyolefins. We also discuss scope and limitations, challenges, and opportunities of this field of research. An important message from this review is that polymer-assimilating enzymes are very likely part of the solution to reaching a circular plastic economy.
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Microbial Enzyme Biotechnology to Reach Plastic Waste Circularity: Current Status, Problems and Perspectives
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This review evaluates the potential of microbial enzymes and whole-cell biocatalysts for plastic waste recycling, finding that while enzymatic tools are effective for PET, the most prevalent unrecycled plastics—polyurethanes and polyolefins—remain resistant to current enzyme-based degradation approaches.
Biocatalytic recycling of plastics: facts and fiction
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This review critically examines the potential of enzymes to degrade and recycle plastic waste as a complement to conventional recycling, finding that only a fraction of current plastic waste is suitable for biocatalytic breakdown and that inconsistent claims about plastic-degrading enzymes highlight the urgent need for standardized testing methods.
Plastic-Degrading Enzymes from Marine Microorganisms and Their Potential Value in Recycling Technologies
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Researchers reviewed marine microorganism-derived enzymes capable of degrading plastics such as PET, finding that since the first plastic-degrading enzyme was discovered in 2005, extensive bioprospecting and protein engineering efforts have identified a growing toolkit of biocatalysts with potential for industrial recycling applications.
Plastic-Degrading Enzymes from Marine Microorganisms and Their Potential Value in Recycling Technologies
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This review catalogues plastic-degrading enzymes discovered in marine microorganisms, including PETases, cutinases, and laccases, and examines their potential for biotechnological applications in plastic waste remediation. Marine environments are highlighted as a rich but underexplored reservoir of enzymatic diversity with promising industrial relevance.
Plastic-Degrading Enzymes as Sustainable Solutions for Plastic Waste
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This review surveys recent advances in plastic-degrading enzymes, covering PETases, cutinases, and laccases along with engineering breakthroughs like FAST-PETase and immobilized enzyme systems. The authors argue that combining enzyme discovery, synthetic biology, and circular economy principles offers a viable path toward scalable enzymatic plastic waste management.
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When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.