History
how we got here
Plastic originally entered the public sphere as a means of convenience. If we look back at the early 1900's, we can see that many of their "old fashioned" ways were actually much more Eco-friendly. The creation of plastic allowed everyday products to be made cheaper and quicker. It's been said that disposable single-use plastic was the beginning of our environmental demise. Convenience has not been kind to planet Earth.
Every year, millions of tons of plastic enter the oceans, of which the majority spills out from rivers. A portion of this plastic travels to ocean garbage patches, getting caught in a vortex of circulating currents.
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Our oceans are the lifeblood of Earth and are home to tens of thousands of fascinating species. They cover 72 percent of the planet, contain over 97 percent of its water, and produce half the oxygen we breathe in.
A whopping 8 million metric tons of plastic is found in seas and oceans every year, which is bad news for marine species. Trash accumulates in five ocean garbage patches, the largest one being the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, located between Hawaii and California.
We learned that the top 10 polluting rivers contribute to over 90% of the pollution in our oceans. Solving this enormous problem requires a combination of closing the source, and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean. It will also take a global effort to reduce our use of plastics.
History Of Plastic Eating Enzymes
Plastic pollution was noticed first in the oceans by scientists studying plankton in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many people and organizations have tried to find good ways to clean up the ocean plastic, but no solution is perfect. In 2013, The Ocean Cleanup organization started making solutions that are large scale enough to collect large amounts of plastic and trash successfully, but this is still a band-aid, trying to clean up the oceans while the world is polluting them faster and faster.
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Scientists first discovered enzymes in 1833. The first enzyme that was discovered was discovered by Anselme Payen and was called Diastase. However, scientists know that enzymes have been around a lot longer than that. They think that enzymes have been around since the dawn of time. Enzymes are proteins that help speed up chemical reactions. In December 2014, it was announced that an articulation eye was created from molecules - combining two things intelligently - using Rosetta, a supercomputer.
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Kenji Miyamoto discovered a bacteria called Ideonella Sakaiensis in 2016 which produces both PETase and MHETase, enzymes that can break down plastics. These enzymes were combined to create a super-enzyme that is bigger, stronger, and faster at eating plastic. This was an important discovery and huge advancement.
Ideonella sakaiensis, a plastic-eating bacteria, was first identified in 2016 by a team of researchers which were led by Kohei Oda from Kyoto Institute of Technology and Kenji Miyamoto from Keio University. Scientists are still studying enzymes and are combining the best features of some enzymes to create new ones. Many enzymes are still a work in progress and are unnamed but they are created to address many different issues. Teams of scientists are hopeful that enzymes can solve many of the world's problems, but they haven’t found a sustainable solution using them for plastic.