Since the commercialization of plastic in the 1960s, plastic has continued to pollute the environment. Despite humanity’s many environmental conservation efforts, approximately 8 million pieces of plastic waste find their way into our oceans daily, adding to the garbage patches already three times the size of France. These plastic wastes have pushed more than 700 marine species to the verge of extinction.

 

Of the many types of plastic, polyethene terephthalate (PET), the most commonly used plastic in our day-to-day products, ranging from water bottles to clothing, has long been considered a severe threat to our environment due to PET’s non-biodegradable nature. Bacteria, which usually decomposes matter, cannot break it down because it is not made of organic material. While UV can break down plastic, it takes too long, requiring as much as 450 years to break down a plastic bottle. 

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jtPqst2W_34ObTa2hm7ZFgaHY-EHqOXW/view?usp=sharing

 

However, nature has created its environmentalists. In 2016, Kohei Oda and Kenji Miyamoto from Keio University published in Science that they successfully isolated Ideonella sakaiensis, a bacterium that can break down and metabolize plastic. Ideonella sakaiensis relies on PET as its primary energy and carbon source by using two enzymes to deconstruct PET’s polymer structure into terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol, the two monomer building blocks of the plastic.