Plastic eating enzymes just got even better! New breakthrough.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- Plastic-eating enzymes were discovered in nature several years ago and scientists having been developing them ever since. Now, a newly discovered enzyme allows them to break down PET into a chemical that can be widely used in nutrition and medicine.
Illustration of the TPADO enzyme image credit to Rita Clare/Scivetica www.scivetica.com
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Research Links
Main Paper
www.pnas.org/d...
Phys.Org Article
phys.org/news/...
Microplastics in lung tissue
phys.org/news/...
BOTTLE Consortium
www.bottle.org...
Centre for Enzyme Innovation
www.port.ac.uk...
Montana State University
www.montana.ed...
Anti-carcinogens in PCA
www.sciencedir...
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Hats off to this man - he does valuable work.
Cheers Tom. Much appreciated
Hats off and let the True You shine out blazingly.
Genuinely impressed by the quality, breadth and humour of your work. I love how you treat your audience like intelligent adults. Bravo!
Awesome topic. Thanks.
Excellent video that offers us some hopeful information about how we might begin to solve the plastic pollution problem.
What about future projections, next steps or timelines? I think most people are just interested in how close we are to sustainable solution and this doesn't really give a sense of how close or far we still are from those goals.
I really would love to someday leave a little piece of PET and the PETase enzyme in a vessel and then just watch how it is dissolving.
I'm extremely glad they're working on making that genetic hiccup that let a bacteria eat plastics even better! The random plastics building up in our environment has been worrying - almost panicking - me for quite awhile. So learning that something really is being done to help the situation helps, at least a little!
This channel is one of the best out there as it strives to help us solve mankind's catastrophes. Thank you. The subject today reminded me of a sci-fi novel I read 5- or 60 years ago (I was a kid) where someone discovered a bacteria that consumed plastics. The scientists worked on it in the UK to make it 'better' and succeeded in making it 'go viral' so to speak and it escaped into the environment. One of the scientists fled to the USA with something that might help bring it under control but halfway across the Atlantic noticed his briefcase was dissolving on his lap! End of book! That book predated DNA manipulation or decoding as well as the internet and so much else, so I will not be loosing any sleep at all that life may imitate sci-fi art!
Hi Bill. Thanks for your feedback. A lot of folks in the comments seem to be worried about that kind of dystopian future, but I think this will be an otherwise benign product that can be well controlled in lab or factory conditions.
Wow!! That one reminds me of “Ice-Nine”. “And so it goes…”
Turning plastic into nutrition? That's amazing...
i think its high time we start a new country on the ocean, just turn all plastics into floating blocks, i want to see a floating pasture, that would be real cool
I can imagine a mediocre sci fi novel about this going wrong and the bacteria becomes very widespread and plastic around the world becomes almost useless
Really enjoyed thanks!
Small note, there is a representation error of the DCD molecule (5:30). It is indicated as being aromatic (dotted ring), but it is not.
There is always a solution to any problem. Although, it would be better if we didn't create the problem in the first place.
There you have the 'problem' of global warming in a nutshell. Instead of coming up with loads of high-tech 'solutions', let's just stop doing the things that are causing the problem.
Imagine if Pamela Anderson went swimming in a lake filled with these things. She’d disappear.
:-)
Great post my friend. I always enjoy your style of presentation. Stay free, happy and healthy ✨️
Cheers Gef. You too :-)
** "Sakai" is a common Japanese surname. **
The plastic in the lungs is probably from items like carpets and clothes etc. Great video!
You seriously need to do an upgrade of that iMac from 2007
This plastic eating thing seems like the next antibiotic race to me.
Your Contet is fantastic.
What ever happened to the two Korean women doctors who discovered a way to turn plastic into salt water?
Hopeful! Commented in Patreon, Dave. Hope it doesn't disappear this time…?
Cheers Mark. I'll hopefully see you there :-)
Thanks for a fantastic video!
All hail the Algorithm
Thank you :-)
What do then use the enzymes for or do you recycle them.
Insightful, concise, with some human warmth added in. What a terrific combination!
Thank you sir. Much appreciated :-)
most of all, well researched and from reputable sources.
there's no point listening to green spam.
Exactly, straight to the point I love this channel
Yep. I now have the plot to my dystopian future novel ready to go! "The plastic-eating enzymes first got loose from a lab in '_____.' The first disasters occurred when a plane fell out of the sky..."
I can't help but feel optimistic after watching this one. This is great progress, lots of tedious work behind, but great achievement. Thanks for sharing this.
Cheers Robert. Much appreciated
So long as these enzymes don’t have any as of yet unforeseen consequences, such as dissolving the entire planet lol. I’m exaggerating of course, but things like this tend to create other issues.
@@mmaaddict78 exactly! You suddenly feel optimistic but you stop yourself thinking, it's too easy. What's the draw back? And suddenly you feel uneasy.
@@mmaaddict78 Drawbacks would likely be economic in nature, like it's expensive to make the enzyme, or it takes forever to work so you need lots of space and time, things like that. Not necessarily insurmountable though.
It really is amazing. I had no idea that they had progressed so far in just 2 years!
An interesting diversion, is that one of the first indications that nature could break down plastics, was from beekeepers. Greater wax moth invades weaker Honeybee hives and lays hundreds of eggs on the beeswax comb. The hatched moth larvae burrow into the comb and eat the beeswax, growing bee larvae and honey at an alarming rate and can destroy a entire hive in weeks. When beekeepers started switching over to better insulated polystyrene based hives, we noticed how the moth larvae also had no problems also burrowing and eating their way through the 3-4cm of solid polystyrene hive walls as well as the plastic bags we sometime use to contain winter sugar candy feeds. They can be a real pest!
I think one of the first indications in the sceince world was when a group of Japanese researchers collected a number of wax moth larvae in a plastic bag only to have them escape over the weekend when they eat their way throgh the bag! They looked into what was going on and discovered the digestive enzymes in the wax moth larvae could digest plastics and that seems to have set off this whole chain of research.
That is interesting, i recall hearing that a beetle larvae could break down polystyrene quickly but most of it is converted to CO2 by their gut flora. better than plastic I suppose.
i do wonder how much carbon we have that is sequestered in plastics globally that might suddenly be released if a pestilent species were to acquire these genes. A similar situation happened in earths history when fungi figured out how to process lignin in trees.it was a time when the air was very oxygen rich and the insects grew huge by todays standard.
I highly recommend Richard Heinberg’s recent book “Power”, Which brilliantly describes the world’s problem of long-term sustainability, and in turn highlights the potential importance of technologies like this.
"Sustainability" has long been, at best, ignored by industry, and at worst considered a dirty word to be ridiculed as "Eco-Terrorist Lingo". Thanks for the reference, will check it out.
@@jamespardue3055 "eco-terrorism" is when you have the audacity to protect the world from ecocide.
I was a co-founder of a recycling firm in the 1980s - unfortunately councils didn't want to go the way I would have preferred. Back in those days everything went in black bins, food, metal, plastic - everything. At that stage I believed the best way to handle large amounts of this waste would have been to really push the bio-waste separation and let everything 'dry' go in the black bags. Then those black bags could be mechanically & hand sorted (even back in the 80s before scanners and more sophisticated identifying tech was available most dry waste could be mechanically separated).
The separated bio waste could be anaerobically digested making biogas (methane) and food grade co2 and the 'digestate' is a fertiliser rich in NPK... the biogas could even power the lorries doing the recycling collections.
Plastic has always been the difficult one to recycle because the value is not great and new plastic can be made cheaply. Perhaps what is needed is a carbon/environmental tax on new plastic, to encourage the reuse and recycling of plastics - sadly the plastic industry plans to double its output in the next 20 years.
The mfgs chose not to accept the cost of recycling ( more profits ), major failure allowing them to push that magnified cost onto consumers.
Banks make nothing, but profits. unproductive and unearned income to boot.
@@jamesmorton7881 Banks provide a service. They provide a place to safely store your money, checking and credit card services, and they provide loans. That's not nothing. Hospitals and schools don't make stuff either they provide services.
Incineration is the best second use for plastics. And anything else. I don’t understand countries that use landfills.
@@TheBooban So you enjoy breathing in waist products? Because all those chemicals go into the air when something is burned.
@@MirrimBlackfox in your back yard yeah. At a proper incinerator, not that junk you have in the US and UK, but like Sweden and Singapore, all the poisons are captured or, you know, incinerated till they are gone. All that crap is burned, nothing but healthy black ash left.
Sounds great. I hope mass production doesn’t have it’s own unintended consequences. A large concentration of the bacteria or enzyme that consumes plastics in the environment might adapt to eating propeller seals, well seals, plastic components, paints, and any number of unforeseen objects. Things don’t always go as intended.
Mutant 59 a tv show just remember what it did.
The book and movie Andromeda Strain. What if it gets loose and eats critical durable goods. Reduce reuse recycle
I once had to go into a derelict, decommissioned lab as part of my then networking job. On the door to one part of the lab was an old sign that said something like "Warning: Methane Eating Microbes. Access only for Dr Chandra." I often wonder what happened to those microbes, or if it was some sort of researcher in joke.
That's the tricky part, isn't it? A big part of why we use plastics in the first place is their durability, including against bacteria. And unlike materials like glass, that isn't because they're at the bottom of the energy well - quite the opposite, they are quite good sources of energy... if something "figures out" how to break those chains. Sooner or later, with or without our help, that's going to happen (as it indeed happened with pretty much all the "inaccessible" sources of energy in the world, though it can of course take a very long time).
Uh oh. Challenger space shuttle ?
If I had to take a guess at how they made the name, sakaiensis is derived from Sakai the city where the bacterium was originally isolated from; Ideonella is derived from Ideon which is the name of the titular mecha from Space Runaway Ideon which is known for destroying a lot of things.
Thanks! I'll hang onto that titbit for my next Trivial Pursuit outing!
Very amazing, thanks for “breaking down” this dense material for all of us. I for one don’t want micro plastics in my lungs so I hope this goes a long way!
It’s already inside of your bloodstream 🤣
Thank you for this followup video. It's really interesting to see how some of the technologies you've discussed earlier are progressing, and in particular it's good to see how plastic-eating enzymes have come along. Letting nature itself do the heavy design work and then improving the results with science seems to be a pretty productive strategy. It makes sense that the original bacteria would have a way to deal with the byproducts like TPA.
Thanks Kevin. I agree - the more we can learn from nature, the better.
Nice one, big shout out to researchers looking to improve the lives of all creatures on the planet. And also to you Dave for another well presented video detailing their exploits 🙏
Thanks William. Much appreciated.
This is an AMAZING update...even better plastic eating enzymes...AWESOME
Plastic in people's lungs? NOT OKAY
Hmm... My own ace research laboratory has come up with a bio-goo that only eats chips. Computer chips. I have it here in this flask. The world will be perfectly safe as long as I don't drop it and - Whoops -
Tinkle... splash.
"FREE! FREE AT LAST!"
Munch, munch, munch...
Aww, poo. Does anybody have a global Restore Point?🤔
Can we release sakaiensis into the rivers, oceans, even the land and gardens to defeat the plastic, or will it become an invasive species? Oh, I'm the first like by the way.
There are millions of kinds of microbes out there in the wild. It's not quite the same as releasing rabbits in Australia, and indeed, it isn't even certain they would be able to compete in the wild in the first place. Not to mention that bacteria work _very_ different from the macroscopic life you're familiar with - they can exchange useful genetic information, and gene-engineer themselves on the fly.
@@LuaanTi Good
While it's great to see progress made breaking down plastics, the scale of the 'problem' seems overlooked.
PET is one of the few plastics that we seem pretty good at recycling.
While I'm not so sure how much value there is in flooding the market with ethylene glycol.
Will watch with interest to see if and how this enzyme is modified to reduce other polymers.
I don't know about 'flooding the market' with ethylene glycol but I can see two good uses for it in 'saving the planet'.
1. As an antifreeze/working fluid in heat pumps which need to work in sub zero conditions.
2. As a heat storage medium/working fluid in solar heating hot water storage systems. It has the obvious antifreeze property and, I believe (correct me if I'm wrong), it has a higher thermal capacity than water.
Either way I agree with you its great to see progress on solutions.
@@emmabird9745 I'd like to see POLYethylene glycol used as it's not nearly as toxic.
While pure water has more capacity to carry heat (volume to volume) ethylene glycol raises the boiling point beyond what your pressure cap might suggest.
Add to this that glycol based antifreeze lubricates seals, inhibits corrosion and keeps anything from growing as advantages.
I still wouldn't want hundreds of gallons of it circulating in my backyard or on my roof.
Hopefully, ethylene glycol is a good feedstock for more valuable products. Maybe even plastic!
@@gregbailey45 😉. 🤣🤣🤣
@@jimurrata6785 First of all thanks for the correction viz a viz thermal capacity. Yes it has a higher boiling point than water but that is unlikely to be important in a heat storage application.
I agree toxic chemicals are not a good idea. I would not advocate producing the stuff from virgin chemicals, however I was looking for a use for a biproduct that, given the ammount of plastic to deal with, we will have a lot of.
I think your suggestion of polyethelene glycol looks a good use for it given ethelene glycol is a feed stock. Not being a chemist I was previously unaware of it, Thanks for the education.
What concerns me is: lets say a bacteria could chomp plastic: wouldn't that make plastic largely useless? Any contamination from it would finish off the shelf-life enhancement that we use plastics for?
Yes, don't spill any on an aircraft as in the Doomwatch episode "The Plastic Eaters" from the 1970's.
Gee how you been using that plastic in your lungs? Been working out good for ya huh?
That could be a possibility. Hopefully advances in material science could help with the creation of a new replacement with less impact to the environment.
Exactly!
Well, the bacteria have already occurred naturally, so that cat is out of the bag. It seems like research is focused on artificial systems that use the enzyme alone, which is much safer. Enzymes can't reproduce, and don't last in the environment; they are just well-designed proteins.
I wonder if those bacteria are safe to ingest and if they can brake down plastics already in our bodies if that would have any health benefits at all that is. Perhaps this should be a recurring topic on a regular basis.
I think we will have to flush it out with non plastic food and water. Our bodies will kill the bacteria.
Even if they're safe to ingest our immune systems will still hunt them down and eliminate them. That and other problems (like the need for additional buffering agents to speed up the reaction, and the problem that the main byproduct of one enzyme is antifreeze) would pretty much rule out the use of this process in living creatures.
I'm not really sure what can be done about microplastics that are in our tissues, but frequent blood donations could reduce the level of plastics (and other forever chemicals) in our blood. Maybe that could be a solution?
@@Kevin_Street It would have to be a modified version that do not cause worse side effects than it cures. Can the micro plastics be filtered out of the blod or how would donations help?
Your body is generally pretty good at fending off assaults by alien bacteria and enzymes. And keep in mind that this is just _one_ enzyme in the chemical repertoire of the bacterium - they're still perfectly capable of eating everything other than plastic in your body ;)
I haven’t looked through all your videos so I might have missed it but a huge issue it seems to me in the plastic recycle world is the number of plastics. Here near Chicago I live in a community that tries to instruct residents on how to recycle household packaging. There is a labeling system on plastics usually from 1-6 that tries to ID the plastic and how you can or can not recycle it. This is usually at a designated drop off if the plastic is something other than plastic pop bottles etc. it’s incredibly frustrating and confusing and if you just decide to not separate plastics you run the risk of contaminating (too many different types) the mix at the drop off point with the result the drop off might be closed. So hopefully we can get these plastic munching enzymes on the job asap and not see the idea just disappear. Another gripe I have is: Have tried purchasing solar panels recently?? Hard to find. Expensive. Usually have to buy in bulk. Big supply chain issues. I don’t need many so I may just buy a couple from Amazon but it’s like buying lumber.
The amount of plastics is definitely an issue, but this is still important because PET is one of the most common. It’s pretty much the most commonly plastic used in the food and drug industry.
I’m also assuming that finding this and working out the kinks for PET will expedite scientists being able to find tweaks that they can do for other common plastics like PP, PE, PC, and PS.
We definitely need to trim down the types of plastics we use though…
This sounds promising but I wonder if PET might be the low-hanging fruit in terms of how easy it is to metabolise. I just looked up some numbers and found that only about 6.7% of plastics produced are PET. And PET recycling is actually among the best already :/
It may be a low hanging fruit, but itll serve as the basis to tackle other plastics as well, not to mention that we could end up having a basis for engineering other plastic enzymes in the future
@@DRakeTRofKBam I am not an organic chemist but my understanding is that especially polymers containing halogens like PVC are a completely different beast.
@@unvergebeneid exactly.
- PET is one of the easiest because it is a polyester. Nature has lots of experience about breaking the ester bond (no need to add energy, just add water and an enzyme).
- Polyethylene or propylene are pure carbon chains. Breaking a carbon-carbon bond inside a carbon chain without relying on any tricks (like double bonds, hydroxy side chains, etc..) is very difficult.
- PVC uses a carbon chain, but some hydrogens were replaced with a chlorine atom. Breaking the carbon-carbon bonds should not be more difficult compared to PE or PP, but you can accidentally make very toxic halogenic carbon compounds. (almost all small halocarbons are highly toxic!)
So for PVC you need to either remove the chlorine from the carbon, which is quite difficult, or convert it into a harmless molecule, which is almost impossible.
@@adamrak7560 thanks for the insight, depressing as it might be!
@@unvergebeneid It's only depressing if you want your water pipes to start rotting in the ground, while dumping toxic halocarbons into your water supply.
I wonder about the toxicity of PETase and whether or not it could be used in drug form to eliminate plastic particles from humans?
The immune system will detect it as a foreign protein and attack it very fast.
Making it human compatible is extremely difficult, because the immune system is very picky about a protein in blood plasma.
Currently not even synthetic antibodies are truly human compatible, so you have to use immunosuppressants to protect them.
A step towards truly closed loop materials cycles where nothing is “Waste” and sustainability moves closer to our planet’s best examples of enrichment or greening.
@Just Hαve α Think’s▫️ reported scam.
A danger I see is: how do you keep PETase with its updated chromosomal configuration, from also breaking down plants cutin layers making plant life highly vulnerable to bacterial degeneration? If this feature is placed back into bacteria the genie will be out of the bottle and most plant life will cease to exist. The pure enzyme would be the only option,but if it’s produced via bacteria its a only a question of time. I guess that problem has to be solved anyway. We can’t have enzymes dissolving plastic before it enters the waste stream. I’ll have to go watch the original post.
That's an easy one to answer, you see I don't know anything but im making it look like i do by writing all this nonsense so that people scrolling past without really looking will think im uber smart and whatnot, and thus my internet rep will be retained. I hope this helps.
The competition dynamic doesn't change so much. Plants are energetically favored until they fall to mulch.
" If this feature is placed back into bacteria the genie will be out of the bottle ..." This is a problem which is solved in a large number of ways for a large number of products. Everything from vaccine components to enzymes to antibiotics is manufactured by growing a microorganism that has been engineered to produce (and sometimes secrete) the product. In doing so, you make choices that won't allow the microorganism to grow outside the factory, and furthermore won't allow the gene to be shared with a different organism.
Nature always has to find a solution. Man only finds a solution if it makes money.
Perfect, now we can indulge in plastics. All sorted. However, I have a question: how are we gonna plant these bacteria along the UK motorways which play the role of landfill for civilized English people. Don't believe me? Try driving in Kent and you'll see tons of plastics dropped on the ground and plastic sheets ornating trees along the highway. The situation is the same all across UK with various degrees of offending quantities.
Speaking as a UK non-car owner, driving a car is practically saying "fuck you" to the enviornment anyway, so a bit of litter out of the window as well is entirely to be expected...
Be great to have an explanation of the practicalities these enzymes would need to do their job. Can you just dump bottles in a vat? Would they need to be really clean / ground up / just PET or would other plastic inclusions mess with the process? How often would the enzyme solution need to be replaced?
Thank you for these superb videos!
Based on how far they’ve gone in two years, I’m wondering if we might have the answers to those questions in just another year or two.
This is a great a advance but PET is the easiest plastic to recycle and the most recycled.
I look forward to the next great advance; digesting the non-recyclable plastics.
Hopefully all the work on PET “greases the skids so those projects move through quickly!”
Lovely and informative videos! I’ve been trying to eliminate as much plastic in my personal life as possible and reduce my waste in general, but it’s nice to see there are promising alternatives to human pollution developed by nature and enhanced by humans. Curious what you’ve heard about breakthroughs regarding ‘plastics’ outside of PET. Like #s 2-7?
TH-cam shenanigans: I usually see your videos on my Home feed in addition to my subscription, but this video did not appear. Just a heads up if you see a pattern.
Thanks for letting me know. TH-cam shenanigans indeed
My first thought was remembering the opening chapter of “The Andromeda strain”………………
For those that are interested, way back in the 60's/70's there was a comic magazine, Green Arrow and Green Lantern, that was about an alien invasion that was polluting the world so they could thrive here, and yes there was the DC version too. I do hope we can control and adapt to our life on this planet.
There was quite an interesting discussion of a paper on this topic on "This Week in Microbiology" TWiM 257 in Jan 2022 on prof. Vincent Racaniello's TH-cam channel (audio only) and standard audio podcast. It was a big data trawl for plastic eating enzymes in the environment at large. 2nd paper discussed after phages, I think open access. Also further discussion on nanoplastics in food - prepare to be shocked...
Thanks Pete. I'll look that up
@@JustHaveaThink thanks for the name check - these 18months+ I've been watching prof. Vincent's Virology course and his science discussions between my normal EV viewing habits and channels like yours. :)
I imagine these enzyme reactions will occur in large reactor vessels. Would the large mass of enzymatic reactions be exothermic thus releasing heat energy as a byproduct?
Enzymatic reactions are always exothermic. The only thing enzymes do is change the kinetics by lowering the energy threshold required for the reaction to occur. The difference in energy between reactants and products is always the same, regardless of the presence of an enzyme
What is still missing is the next step: How to proceed to get the PET Problem with waste in oceans and on land really solved. Without practical next steps these findings remain scientific peakock feathers…
Can this be a threath to plastics? Can these bacteria contaminate plastics that are meant to be used? I can understand how this can solve plastic waste problem, but what if this degrades plastics for example used in medical equipments?
Next question when can i drink this bacteria to get rid of the plastic in me :D
Diapers in a dump seem like the ultimate petri dish... Or at least the ultimate naming opportunity
apparently nobody played the ring world is adventure. where a high tech society was brought down when a bacteria started eating it's superconductors. plastics eating stuff sounds nice until it eats your windows or phone. I am all for cleaning up or do plastic waste but hopefully they are carefull with the super stuff.
Sounds like great news for smartphones makers. That will make people not have a phone for too long and buy a new one.
'...carefull...'? Yeah, right! We are famous for that.
Thanks that gives me hope that science will come to the rescue and save mankind. I was beginning To wonder if there was still reason to Hope.THANK-YOU!
Thanks Lester. Stay hopeful :-)
really annoys me that so much of the plastic problem could be addressed with a tax that makes virgin plastic a bit more expensive than recycled plastic. same thing with climate change: we need to implement a carbon tax. anyways, great vid as usual
We the consumer would end up paying the tax. While companies would say we have to raise prices because of the supply chain.
@@shawnr771 someone will always have to pay, the point is to have people switch to alternatives that don’t pollute as much because they will be cheaper then the polluting ones, and taxpayers will have to pay to clean up the pollution at one point…
@@shawnr771 I don't understand this argument. Of course the consumer would end up paying the tax. The point isn't making "the companies pay for their sins!!!", the point is making recycled plastic more economically viable than virgin plastic. Of course the end result is going to be higher prices, much of the point of using plastic in the first place is to make things cheaper - if that's no longer available, things are going to get more expensive, duh. We're not even really paying for the "sins of our fathers" - we're just going to end up paying the same as they should have, but not really more. It's just yet another thing that made life in a previous generation slightly easier, and not even a particularly big or important one.
@@LuaanTi Well since many people cant afford food and rent now how are they going to magically afford higher prices?
Being that many corporations and businesses are not paying competitiave wages. Opting for paying out higher stock dividends and board member compensation.
@@shawnr771 The USA isn't the whole world. The way US workers are treated is abysmal, and it will hurt to fix that, one way or another. In the end, people will find ways to survive, and when wages drop low enough to actually not be (painfully) living wages... people aren't going to take that offer anymore.
Stopping the culture of "don't tell anyone how much you're making!" will probably have a much bigger and faster effect than anything related to "frivolous dividends" and such. Though you should have a look at the stock market - you might be surprised how low dividends tend to be.
There's also a super basic (as opposed to acidic) mold that can make granite temporarily clay like, very handy for building Southern American pyramids.
Thanks for (as opposed to acidic) because I thought you meant the mold was simple!
I have a think. Since most bottle recycling systems use the barcode for identification, would not a competition inspire better recycling practices? I'm sure the Pepsi/Coke rivalry could be made to work in our favor if some matter of pride or prizes was at stake. Just a thought.
Possibly, but I think the biggest thing holding back recycling is that virgin plastic will pretty much always be cheaper. This is because it’s basically made the the left overs from a barrel of oil.
So until we stop drilling for oil, it’s almost impossible for recycled plastic to ever be cheaper than virgin.
Funnily enough, that's how it worked with glass bottles. Each had an identification of where it was made/bottled, and the _plant_ was responsible for collecting them. They paid for any waste. But then Coca Cola "convinced" a bunch of politicians that plastic bottles are disposable, and so it should be up to the customer to liquidate them properly. The rest is history :)
If you let corporations make the laws, we're actually going to end up in that cyberpunk dystopia :D
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet Not oil, even - natural gas. But yes, in the US, that's surprisingly often considered a "waste product" of oil drilling. Much of that has to do with that annoying property - it's a gas. If it doesn't have enough natural pressure, it actually _is_ useless - compressing it for long-range transport costs way too much energy to be worth it. This is also one of the major issues of using the gas infrastructure for anything other than natural gas - it's easy enough to produce something like natural gas, but you don't get the free pressure; and suddenly... it just isn't worth it. Despite the fact that it actually has a lot of energy per gram.
@@LuaanTi I like how the author of Donut Economics puts it. She says “a free market doesn’t actually exist. All that happens in the absence of rules is that the person with the most money makes up the rules so that they can keep their money. So wouldn’t you rather be a part of making the rules?0
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet That's not what happens in the _absence_ of rules, though. It's what happens in a rule-based world that doesn't have rules for everything (which is impossible, of course). As bad as companies acting willy-nilly is, it's still preferable to companies forcing everyone to do what they want through their cronies in the government :D
I'm under no illusions that a truly anarcho-capitalist system could really work. But modern problems are often the result of those wealthy people pushing their agenda through the ever-growing government.
Can we construct a government that _isn't_ ever-growing, and one that can prevent general violence, and be stable against all kinds of manipulation? IMO a big start is in making the whole system smaller. Which in the end is kind of the whole point of the free market - you want a world of alternatives to choose from. That doesn't necessarily mean there will be something you _want_ to choose, but that's still preferable to having to take what the state gives you, and you better be happy about it! :P
The founding fathers in the US tried to build such a government. Obviously enough, they failed - to the point where the US is barely recognizable as a developed country in many regards. But we still have to keep trying to find a better way, and we need to find a way there that doesn't murder millions ;)
What happens when the bacteria spread beyond the lab and landfill to attack PET everywhere - like in our machines and food storage , medical materials, cars and airplanes, et al? Then, imagine that it mutates to eat all plastic polymers. Then ... ?
Read the novel “Mutant 59”
thanks for the update on the development of this tech...hope it becomes viable at a commercial scale asap
Yea, I’m also hoping that we hear word on commercialization in the next year or two.
What about plastics we need to maintain its integrity
Do these super enzymes chomp on plant collagen or only plastics? I don't want it to start chomping through our forests like an eraser.
There's already plenty of bacteria and fungi that eat wood :) Indeed, the lignin in wood has been a tough nut for bacteria to crack since it was first introduced, which was a big part of the success of woody plants back in the day.
What would happen when this enzyme is introduced to nature? Would it decimate my kale garden?
There's plenty of bacteria who can eat your kale garden just fine. No need for ones specialised for eating polyethylene :D
Seems like the world still needs basic research in chemistry and physics to fix the many problems that humans have today
Never ending battle. The larger our species. The larger our problems become.
Has any progress been made on the oil eating bacteria used to help with the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico ?
Sure seems like oil spills are still happening around the world and could use some help with the clean up.
To add to the question, Dave, if you see it, can you do a video about bioremediation?
As OP mentions, there's bacterioremediation. But there is also;
- phytoremediation (via plants), and
- mycoremediation (via fungi).
Can it broke down Microplastics
Exciting news. I have a question. What if the enzyme find three way to our food containers before we dispose it?
Cool video, thanks. 5:22 The "DCD" molecule is shown with too many bonds (5) to the leftmost carbon in the ring (bonded with the carboxyl and alcohol groups). The ring is no longer aromatic, but the drawing shown doesn't represent this. The double bond to that carbon should be single, and the other 2 double bonds shifted one place counterclockwise on the ring (and a hydrogen added to the ring carbon showing just an OH group when the double bonds shift). I know that means little to most, but I thought it should be pointed out because trivial truth is still truth. Reaction mechanisms are my crossword puzzles. : )
Cheers Troy. You get the prize for "comment of the week" :-)
Not really a usefull comment, but you are right; assuming the left most (CO2H) chain is our R group (so hydroxyls at C1 ortho and carboxyls at para and C1), the double bonds are C2-C3 and C4-C5.
The reason you shouldn't point this out is because anyone who requires this information to be accurate will read the paper, this is here for easy demonstration and can easily be replaced with A B and C, the rest of the information in the diagram is the destablisation of the ring which is not talked about so does not need to be shown. Also elitism in STEM is one of the main reasons women and minorities are excluded and diswades a lot of people from STEM subjects, resulting in sexism and xenophobia in those areas.
Treating your comment with the same respect;
Its not a drawing its a diagram, he didn't draw this, there's no pencil lines.
It's not an alcohol group cuz its not on the end of the chain.
Is it still counter clockwise if Iook at it from the other side, you should proabably use more scientic language.
A better suggestion would be not to add any of the hydrogens as they are optional on skeletal diagrams.
This is not a reaction mechanism, its a reaction, your knowledge of reaction mechanisms is not applicable.
I know these suggestions mean little to you but you are still wrong and because I told you that means I am smarter. Trival truth is still truth, I do quantum mechanics while on the toilet.
The elitism thing is the main take away tho, dont be like that dude.
@@callmeray7705 You're overreacting and failed to see I am only enthusiastic, not critical. The assumptions are yours. Enjoy your day!
So, what is the possibility of these enzymes becoming a new type of termite like problem to worry about?
@@tiermacgirl My question is based on historic related concerns. Such as: Asian Carp in America
Rabbits and
Cane Toads in Australia
Kudzu
Gray Squirrel in the U.K.
Killer Bees in South America
Starlings again in America to name a few.
All of these things began with well meaning people trying to make the world a better place but instead they brought destructive outcomes. So, will these new upgraded enzymes know the difference between garbage and everything else made of plastic? That doesn't seem like a frivolous or unreasonable question.
I wish we had "discovered" and invested in this kind of tech sooner. Kinda feels like we're leaving our clean up efforts as a side thing.
In reality, I think it’s that the two prior generations left it as a side thing, and millennials and Gen Z are being stuck with the bill.
Great Stuff Dave. Thanks for making sense of some of the impenetrable scientific terms (and that comes from someone with a scientific degree :-/ ). I can’t add to the dialogue but I believe that leaving comments here also helps to promote the channel on the You Tube algorithm, hence my comments here.
Cheers Hugh. Much appreciated :-)
Good stuff (although I still have the same concern I had last time - what happens when this gets out into the wild and starts eating ALL our PET, not just the rubbish?!) My one criticism would be that they seem to be working on the wrong sort of plastic. PET, being a thermoplastic, is actually the easiest plastic to recycle, as it can be melted down and used to make new bottles (etc). Also, according to Wikipedia (so it must be true), PET is one of the best plastics to burn, as it releases a lot of energy - and is thus a good alternative to fossil fuels. True, this bacteria/enzyme/magic would be useful for some other PET uses, such as fibres in clothing, where recycling is more or less impossible, but what we really need is something that 'eats' the plastics that can't be recycled.
The mutated bacterium is already “out there” anyway. It has been identified at one recycling site so it could well be elsewhere too. Unlike Sci-Fi movies where alien bacteria instantly devour plastics and planes fall out of the sky, the process will still need specific conditions of humidity, temperature etc and probably wouldn’t occur at all on the plastic bottles in your fridge. Also, using a recombinantly produced enzyme means that it can’t “escape” and reproduce “in the wild” (it could leak and make a mess but no more).
The bacteria have already occurred naturally, so that cat is out of the bag. It seems like research is focused on artificial systems that use the enzyme alone, which is much safer. Enzymes can't reproduce, and don't last in the environment; they are just well-designed proteins.
Also, burning plastics is not an alternative to fossil fuels, because plastics are made almost entirely from oil or from fossil methane gas. It would be better to bury the plastics once we can no longer recycle them, so they stay out of the environment and don't oxidize to CO2.
There is an enzyme discovered from the sap of the banana tree that can “eat” the plastic Coca-cola bottle. This was discovered by Dr. Serafin Riosa of the DOST during the Marcos years. This enzyme is still being used today in the Philippines as a disinfectant and odor remover in waste products…
And just like that… the next plague eats away all our plastic structures and plastics resources….
real-time, broken down for the laymen, insightful & easy to follow... Mahalo. I am searching for researchers/engineers/businessmen/philanthropists/contributors to work together to secure government funding/secure location, design/build/install a plastic-eating enzyme facility on Maui. Mr. Borlace, can you direct me a platform where this is possible?
Smurf figure collector, woken up by the sentence: "If you have some great plastic collection, ... comment below!"
Something else can break down microplastics into simple molecules. Fire. We need energy especially now when gas is expensive. Plastics should be burnt, which removes the need for sorting them or purification of these chemicals out of the waste.
Plastics are generally made from gas. As for burning, it absolutely doesn't remove the need for sorting - indeed, a big part of the sorting is to separate the "clean" plastics (like polyethylene, which can be safely burned to produce electricity or whatever) from the "dangerous" ones (like PVC, which will release chlorine into the atmosphere, unless you specifically build the plant to capture that).
Plastic burning plants exist. It's an efficient way to deal with plastic waste. But not _all_ plastic waste.
I think you can burn dirty plastic that would need to be washed or rejected for recycling. Yes, chlorine is an evil one. Would PVC corrode the furnace over time?
Incredibly interesting but I just can't help think that this is one of those crazy feats of engineering that we do just so we can keep our conveniently disposable plastic bottles of water.
There is absolutely a chance that the fossil fuels and chemical industries will try to outfit this research to prop up and sustain their current business models of, yes, making plastic bottles.
I'd much rather that these researchers patent the biotechnology to keep it out of the hands of those companies, all the while making progress on enzymes to eat up #2 HDPE through to #7 Mixed plastics as well as bioplastics.
This tech is very dangerous, so we need to be smart about it's rollout so it doesn't get into the wrong hands.
@@SeeNickView I think burning plastics to make electricity makes more sense - if it is done with minimal pollution.
I think he said,green tea aids in cleanising plastic from humans Bodies 😁😴I'm sleepy though🌠😴🌠😴🌠😴🌠😴😴😴😴
It's nice to see that the RSPC bacteria (Rumper-Stumper-Plastic-Chumper, as you christened them in the previous video, great on the scientific lingo, btw) have grown to the point that they can produce useful stuff.
I know that I may sound sarcastic with the next comment, but if Hollywood and the entertainment industry have managed to discover how to recycle their products into their basic components and milk them for all the profit they can squeeze out of their garbage, frankly speaking, the plastic industry should have figured out the benefits of large-scale recycling and its inherent profits 20 years ago.
The hoops we'll jump through to ensure the continued success of the plastics industry.
Well of course. It's an endless supply of construction materials. Even if we runout of crude oil. There is always vegetable oil. Granted the last one is whole another problem that would need to be solved.
Nature does a thing, humans "I'm sure we can do better, what could possibly go wrong............"
I got my physics degree from Montana State University. GO BOBCATS!!!!!
Very Inviting to All - ‘ PLASTIC WASTE ‘ * CLEANUP THE OCEANS * with “ BOYAN SLAT “ - dreamed of since childhood , followed hearts Great Ambition through to Uni Degree . Beginning with * 100 dirtiest Rivers * & great Pacific waste Patch
A Must View - ✨ many encouraging people working Alongside of Him !! 👍
Very good! However, the PET plastic that they can now break down is the most easily recyclable. Plastics are given one of seven identification codes:
7, Polyethylene terephthalate (PET); 6, High-density polyethylene (HDPE); 5, Polyvinyl chloride (PVC); 4, Low-density polyethylene (LDPE); 3, Polypropylene (PP); 2, Polystyrene (PS); and 1, Other (often polycarbonate or ABS).
We still have to deal with the HDPE, PVC, LDPE, PP, PS, polycarbonate and ABS.
I imagine that, in the UK at least, a lot of these plastics will be collected, supposedly for recycling (if they come as plastic bottles, my local authority collects them all, provided that citizens do their duty and don’t bung it all into the grey bin for landfill). Where they go after that I don’t know, but it’s not China any more, nor Malaysia. This is just as well, since the Chinese and Malaysian contractors only recycled the easy stuff and let the rest find its way into soil and watercourses.
C.f. Kit Pedler's 1971 novel 'Mutant 59, The Plastic Eater'. Developed to unblock a drain, Mutant 59 eventually moves on to feed on cable insulation, window seals on jet aircraft, false teeth...
The France company Carbios SA is developing a industryal process with this backtirials, enzymes. The target is make recycling of PET more effective.
I saw this in a movie. The Bacterium That Ate Battle Creek. Eventually something will be created that will eat everything and we will be back to the stone age.
This just made my day that much better! Thanks to you and to the scientists who worked on this!
Glad you liked it :-)
Very interesting. Thanks
This is awesome and the exact direction they should be going because working with Nature to harness Nature is the best approach 👍
Foretold in the 80s by Wendy O and The Plasmatics on their Maggots album, don't let get to the meal worms, or we're fucked lol.
Exciting discoveries! I will be studying plastic-degrading bacteria and hopefully could find novel enzymes that can match the efficiency of PETase from Ideonella sakaiensis.
Microplastics found in human lungs?
I'm not the least bit surprised...
Love the plastic chomping research summary, David!