The Answer to Plastic Pollution. How enzymes are the future!

As we all know, plastics are a crucial material used for decades in many industry sectors such as clothing, health care, electronics and more. It is projected that by 2040, 800 million tons of plastics per year will be produced around the world (Carniel et al., 2021). Many people would be surprised to know that one of the main plastics, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), is found in clothes and when these clothes are washed small plastics known as microplastics are released. These microplastics are smaller than 5 mm in size and are a troubling concern for the aquatic ecosystem. In a case study in China, PET microplastics were found in a species of mussels (Mytilus edulis) along 12,400 miles of coastline (Wu et al., 2017). Microplastics have also been found in human food and beverages, such as seafood, drinking water, salt and sugar, and even in the air you breathe (Henry et al., 2019). This sets the problem of microplastic production into perspective and why solutions to this troubling issue need to be placed at the forefront of biotechnological advances