The abstract of an April 27, 2022 Nature article https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04599-z by researchers with the University of Texas at Austin report that “… a circular carbon economy for Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) is theoretically attainable through rapid enzymatic depolymerization followed by repolymerization or conversion/valorization into other products … we use a structure-based, machine learning algorithm to engineer a robust and active PET hydrolase ... We demonstrate that untreated, postconsumer-PET from 51 different thermoformed products can all be almost completely degraded by FAST-PETase in 1 week. FAST-PETase can also depolymerize untreated, amorphous portions of a commercial water bottle and an entire thermally pretreated water bottle at 50 ºC. Finally, we demonstrate a closed-loop PET recycling process by using FAST-PETase and resynthesizing PET from the recovered monomers. Collectively, our results demonstrate a viable route for enzymatic plastic recycling at the industrial scale …” #PlasticWaste #SingleUsePlastic #Recycling @NaturePortfolio @UTAustin
Animal Digestible Food Packaging Initiative
Our reason-for-being/goal/purpose/objective/intent is to convince/inspire/persuade/encourage the food processing industry to establish and fund a public private partnership for the discovery of new food packaging materials that would be digestible by animals (farm animals as well as ubiquitous microbes).
