Recycling single-use plastic with bacteria

Every year, more than 300 million tons of plastic are produced worldwide, and around half of the produced materials are designed for single-use purposes. In fact, more plastic has been produced over the last decade than throughout the whole last century. Its inexpensive cost, its rigid and flexible properties, and its wide versatility have facilitated and normalized a culture conditioned to waste, thereby degrading and polluting the environment. Thus far, mechanical and chemical recycling have been the default responses to deal with plastic in its end-of-life stages. However, while popular methods like heat compression (thermo-mechanical recycling) can recycle all forms of plastic, they are energy intensive and can impair the integrity of the polymer molecules before being shipped to third-party manufacturing companies for alternative uses.

Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev are looking into biodegradation by bacteria — a simpler and more environmentally friendly way to break down and recycle PET (polyethylene terephthalate), the most common type of plastic in food and beverage packaging and textile products. In November, a research collaboration agreement was signed between BGN Technologies, the technology company of Ben-Gurion University and Portuguese company Ecoibéria as part of a one-year project to study and demonstrate the effectiveness of bacterial biodegradation of PET. The results of the joint study may streamline the presently cumbersome plastic recycling process used today, which involves plastic bottles being collected from recycling bins before being separated by type and color and then ground into small chips and melted into sheets of raw material and fibers.

20 years of research

“Our research dealt with the decomposition of various polymers of plastics,” says Prof. Ariel Kushmaro of BGU’s department of biotechnology engineering. The lead researcher in this project was Prof. Alex Sivan, who started working in this field 20 years ago, when the world’s research on the biological decomposition of plastics was in its infancy.-- More...