HUMAN-MADE “SUPER-ENZYME” SPEEDS PLASTIC DECOMPOSITION

The bacterium I. sakaiensis has been eating away at the 300 million tons of plastic humanity tosses in the trash each year, but it takes the bug weeks to finish a meal.
Bioscientists at the Kyoto Institute of Technology engineered a better bug, one that breaks down plastic six times faster than its ancestors.
The bacterium breaks down PET, one of the most commonly used plastics, using an enzyme called PETase. Researchers at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the University of Portsmouth re-engineered the enzyme in 2018 to make it work about 20 percent faster.
The Japanese team has chemically connected PETase with MHETase, a similar enzyme, and found that the new, conjoined “super-enzyme” sped the bacterium’s digestion of plastic sixfold.
The new super-enzyme breaks down plastic into its component chemicals, ready for re-use as part of an infinite recycling loop.
TRENDPOST: More and more businesses are shunning virgin plastic as they respond to consumers’ demands for eco-friendly corporate practices. The new enzyme could help meet manufacturer’s soaring demand for recycled plastic.

Comments (4)

Let’s hope this is true. Images of thousands of plastic items washed on small beach shores is a disaster.

October 7, 2020 Jay Jericho

Let’s hope it’s not true, because waste is not the only deleterious effect of plastics, most of which exhale nasty chemicals while in use. Of course, the economy, or what’s left of it, cannot exist without plastic. That’s a great indicator of how wisely ‘technociety’ has developed since the greatest threat to planet and human survival occurred: The Industrial Revolution.
Society is very quick to categorize an individual’s suicidal thoughts and behavior as a form of mental illness, but very slow to acknowledge the collective variety, which is what our obsessive embrace of advanced technology (which would better be called TOXnology) IS. Most folks think the capitalist economic/financial system developed spontaneously (amid some argument), but what if it has been developed as a mechanism for flowing wealth to the top, where it’s used to expand the ever-expanding control of the global financial elite over society and our lives. Gerald routinely and erroneously blames this on politicians (puppets) and “presstitutes” (elite servants).
He doesn’t want to acknowledge that the system itself is the problem, not how it’s run. It’s a corruption designed to be further corrupted, but all most people see, including GC, is the ‘further’ part. That’s a convenient place to live for GC, who can use it to advantage via perpetuation.
But when the real crunch comes, all the gold, precious TOXO-minerals, and fat portfolios in the world will not save you. The fundamental issue is way of life per se. We’re WAY down the wrong road, and not by accident. One might argue for “Sustainable Development, and Clean Renewable Energy. Nothing but Elite constructs/psyops for continuing Earth-sacrifice for wealth, power and control. It’s a big part of what COVID is all about – especially control – as in global surveillance state/human- control system (wireless toxnology). “Advanced Technology: Does Society’s Obsession Reflect a Form of Collective Mental Illness?”
https://www.activistpost.com/2020/07/advanced-technology-does-societys-obsession-reflect-a-form-of-collective-mental-illness.html

October 7, 2020 Peter Tocci

Great points, Peter!
It’s often been said that Capitalism and Communism are two sides of the same coin – both leading inexorably to enslavement. Both enriching their psychopathic masters.
In your article, you stated the dumbed-down Hegelian Dialectic “Problem/Reaction/Solution” – but it is much more insidious than that, because it is actually Hypothesis/Anti-thesis/Synthesis – and that is what we fight on a daily basis. It’s all about pushing things forward as radically and quickly as possible, and, when you’re on the Anti-thesis end of things, the proposals put forward as Hypothesis are so far out of the realm of possibility (think AOC’s Green New Deal) that any resistance makes you look like a dinosaur about to go extinct. So, most are conditioned to accept the “Olive branch” of the Synthesis solution, which is what the Hypothesis people actually want in the first place.
Until more of us recognize fully exactly what we’re up against, we will not be able to defeat it.

October 7, 2020 Ed Wunder

As I see it we live in a world that has abandoned the idea of conscience. People growing up in our culture are not taught the “formation of conscience.” They are taught and encouraged to do what is best for them regardless of the effect on other people or the environment. Selfishness is the watch word or “let someone else do it” or “i don’t care since I will be gone soon.” All of this is a profound lack of respect for other people, for the environment and the world around us. Kindness to others, to the environment, and to the world we live in is considered hokey. Too bad for there is such a thing as karma, i.e., what goes around comes around, etc. The formation of conscience in the early years is critical to the person, to others, to the world and to our duty to follow God’s 10 Commandments.

October 11, 2020 lvblasiotti

HUMAN-MADE “SUPER-ENZYME” SPEEDS PLASTIC DECOMPOSITION

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