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Scientists accidentally create mutant enzyme that eats plastic bottles

• olliej 8y ago
  Hyperbolic title (in the original article, link title just copies that) They improved upon the enzyme isolated from a Japanese bacteria that was found to degrade PET. It was interesting to me that plastic bottle “recycling” is just shredding and using for things like carpet :-/
  • mr_spothawk 8y ago
    > “recycling” is just shredding and using for things if you read the bumped Wired piece from B.Joy yesterday, he touches on (his vision of) nanotech's future, and the sorts of molecular recycling options that will come online in the next 12 years. until then, depolymerization is a hard problem ... so plastic shredding is what we get.
    • olliej 8y ago
      Oh yeah -- I'm not saying it doesn't make sense, just that it wasn't something I ever thought about/understood. Kind in that weird "plastic melts so you can just melt it down and remold it, right?" mindset. Even though I do know that you can't do that for all plastics. That said, what happens if you grind up + compress + heat those plastics? (it sounds like you understand this better than I do)
• sooper 8y ago
  What does it break the PET down into?