Eating Single-Use Plastic

A super-enzyme that breaks down plastic bottles six times faster than ever before has been created by scientists in Japan and could be ready for recycling use in the next two years.

The super-enzyme, derived from bacteria that first evolved its own ability to eat plastic naturally, now could unlock the key to full recycling of single-use bottles. Scientists believe combining it with enzymes that break down cotton might also allow mixed-fabric clothing to be recycled. That’s a very big deal! Between our hunger for fashion-forward clothing and the ubiquitous single-use water bottle, tons of these items go into landfills and our streams and oceans every year.

The super-enzyme comes from linking two separate enzymes, both of which were found in a plastic-eating bug discovered at a Japanese waste site in 2016. Japanese researchers had an engineered version of the first enzyme in 2018, which started breaking down plastic in a few days. The exciting news is that the next generation super-enzyme gets to work six times faster.

“When we linked the enzymes, rather unexpectedly, we got a dramatic increase in activity,“ John McGeehan, professor at the University of Portsmouth, told The Guardian. “This is a trajectory towards trying to make faster enzymes that are more industrially relevant. But it’s also one of those stories about learning from nature, and then bringing it into the lab.”

Not to be outdone by the Japanese discoveries, French company Carbios spent some time in a compost heap of leaves (not kidding here), and uncovered an enzyme of their own. This enzyme can degrade 90 percent of plastic bottles within 10 hours, but requires heating above 150 degrees Fahrenheit.

The new super-enzyme works at room temperature, and Professor McGeehan explained to The Guardian that combining different approaches could speed progress towards commercial use: “If we can make better, faster enzymes by linking them together and provide them to companies like Carbios, and work in partnership, we could start doing complete recycling within the next year or two.”

We’ve talked in this space before about the dangers of sourcing knock-offs of electronic accessories. What we haven’t discussed much is that the danger now even involves private label accessories and electronics sold at major retailers like Amazon, Costco, and Target. CNN investigated AmazonBasics last month, a popular private label line for more than 5,000 products. The line has a mission: identifying everyday items that Amazon can create at a similar or higher quality and lower price point when compared to existing name brands.

The CNN research searched keywords including "fire," "dangerous," and "burn." Reporters identified more than 1,500 reviews about AmazonBasics electronics and appliances posted by US customers on Amazon.com from 2016 through early 2020 that described safety-related issues. More than 10 percent of the reviews identified by CNN reported that products had caught fire, in some cases describing how flames shot out of the devices. In those 1,500 reviews, consumers explicitly called out items as potentially dangerous, using terms such as "hazard" or "fire" or saying the product should be recalled. According to CNN, 30 items with three or more reviews like this remain for sale on Amazon.com today.

My point in bringing this up is to point out that choosing to private label a product creates an expectation of performance and safety commensurate with the brand itself. If you are talking to your clients about sourcing a private label product or, heaven forbid, even a knock-off, make sure the conversation includes whether or not the brand could weather the PR storm of a failed product — and even an injury or death.