The plastic emergency
Plastics are essential materials in our lives, but they show a problem: they are difficult to degrade. As a consequence, 79% of the plastic waste is stored in landfills or released into the environment.
Taking advantage of microbes
Some bacteria can degrade common plastics such as polyethylene (PET) or polyurethane (PU) by secreting enzymes. In addition, certain species can be modified to use these materials as food to obtain energy.
A circular solution
MIPLACE will develop a process that uses plastic waste as a feedstock for engineered microbial communities. These microbes will transform it into the raw materials used to create a sustainable plastic, Bio-PU, that can enter the cycle once thrown away.
LATEST NEWS
MIPLACE partner interviewed by Packaging Europe
08/07/22 - Packaging Europe have published a feature 'Can PET-eating enzymes help to solve the plastic waste problem?' based on a recent interview with our partner from the University of [...]
Investigating biobased building blocks for polyurethanes
06/07/22 - Our partners at SOPREMA and the University of Strasbourg along with their colleagues have published the results of a study investigating the use of different stereoisomers of 2,3-butanediol [...]
MIPLACE at the Great Exhibition Road Festival 2022
28/06/22 – MIPLACE partners based at Imperial College London (ICL) were delighted to take part in the Great Exhibition Road Festival 2022, a festival of science and arts activities, that [...]
MIPLACE wins ERA CoBioTech video contest 🥇
15/06/22 - We are delighted to announce that the MIPLACE video won first prize in the recent ERA CoBioTech video contest. The contest, launched in December 2021, aimed to promote [...]
MIPLACE to take part in science and arts festival
15/06/22 - MIPLACE is joining forces with a healthcare research team from Imperial College London to host a workshop that explains how microbes can be 'helpful' by tackling plastic waste [...]
MIPLACE partner attends CMIBM 2022
15/06/22 - MIPLACE partner, Alba Iglesias, recently attended the VIII National Congress of Industrial Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology (CMIBM 2022) and presented a poster entitled "Bioprospecting for polyurethane degrading microorganisms". [...]
PARTNERS
MIPLACE project is funded under the 2nd ERA BioTech Joint Transnational Call