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
A new review of plastic biodegradation
20/09/22 - Our partners from RWTH Aachen University, Dr Till Tiso and Prof. Lars Blank, have contributed to a recently published review on the current situation regarding the biodegradation of [...]
MIPLACE partner wins prize at EBNet ECR Conference 2022 🏆
16/09/22 - Congratulations to Dr Alice Banks for winning the 'Best in Session' prize for her talk on 'Environmentally isolated microbial chassis for the upcycling of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) to [...]
MIPLACE highlighted in Nature Biotechnology
16/09/22 - Our project has been highlighted in a perspective piece at Nature Biotechnology as one of the groundbreaking initiatives dealing with PET waste by harnessing the potential of microorganisms. [...]
MIPLACE partner a speaker at the EBNet ECR Conference 2022
12/09/22 - Dr Alice Banks is presenting her research in a talk entitled ‘Environmentally isolated microbial chassis for the upcycling of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) to value-added products’ at the Environmental [...]
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 [...]
PARTNERS
MIPLACE project is funded under the 2nd ERA BioTech Joint Transnational Call