Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com May 11 news, plastic pollution is a major environmental problem facing the world today, how to effectively recycle plastics has become an urgent issue. According to CTOnews.com, some microbes that can decompose plastics have been found, but their enzymes are usually only effective at temperatures above 30 °C in industrial applications. This requires heating, increasing costs and carbon emissions. Recently, scientists have discovered a kind of microorganism that can decompose and digest plastic at low temperature, which may be a scientific leap in the field of microbial recycling.

Scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute WSL have discovered a microbe that can digest plastic at 15 degrees Celsius, the Guardian reported. Their findings were recently published in the journal Frontiers of Microbiology.

Dr Joel Rutti of WSL and colleagues collected 19 strains of bacteria and 15 species of fungi from soil in Greenland, Svalbard and Switzerland, all growing in natural environments or on plastic that had been artificially buried in the ground for a year. In the laboratory, they let these microbes grow in the dark at a temperature of 15 degrees Celsius as a single strain, and tested whether they could digest different types of plastics.

These bacteria belong to 13 genera of actinomycetes and amoeba, and fungi belong to 10 genera of ascomycetes and actinomycetes. The plastics tested include non-biodegradable polyethylene (PE) and biodegradable polyester-polyurethane (PUR), as well as two commercially available biodegradable mixtures, polybutylene succinate-terephthalic acid (PBAT) and polylactic acid (PLA).

It was found that no microorganism could digest PE during the 126-day culture period. However, 19 microorganisms (56%), including 11 fungi and 8 bacteria, can digest PUR at 15 degrees Celsius, while 14 fungi and 3 bacteria can digest a mixture of PBAT and PLA.

Dr Rutti told the Guardian: "We have found new groups of microbes in 'plastic circles' in alpine and Arctic soil that can break down biodegradable plastics at 15 degrees Celsius. These organisms can help reduce the cost and environmental burden of the plastic enzymatic recycling process."

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