Pollution

Scientists have engineered an enzyme which can digest some of the world’s most commonly polluting plastics, and they believe it could offer a potential solution to the problem of plastic waste.

PET, patented as a plastic in the 1940s, has not existed in nature for very long. So the team, headed by Professor John McGeehan at the University of Portsmouth and Dr Gregg Beckham at the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), set out to determine how the enzyme evolved and if it might be possible to improve it.

According to a new survey from the British Science Association, Britons are regularly misunderstanding what can and cannot be recycled, damaging the environment in the process.