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Plastics with embedded particles decompose in days instead of years
Summary
Researchers developed a novel 'self-digesting' plastic by embedding plastic-eating enzymes inside the polymer during manufacturing, allowing it to degrade within days under industrial composting conditions rather than years. This approach could help solve the microplastic problem by making plastic biodegradation faster and more complete.
“Biodegradable” plastics exist, but they’re not so great at biodegrading. These polymers often take months or years to decompose, and even then can form potentially harmful microplastics. Scientists have now been able to speed up the process by encasing plastic-chomping enzymes in a protective coating and incorporating the resulting nanoparticles into the plastic as it’s made ( Nature 2021, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03408-3 ). Exposure to humidity and temperatures of 40–60 °C unleashes the enzymes, which decompose the polymers into monomer to trimer units in hours to days. Polycaprolactone (PCL) and polylactic acid (PLA) are both biodegradable plastics, used for food containers, biomedical applications, and biodegradable dog-poop bags. But these polymers degrade readily only at the high temperatures found in industrial composting facilities. Ting Xu , a chemical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, and her team from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of Massachusetts, and UC Berkeley wanted to