09/08/21 – Wolfgang Zimmermann from the team at Leipzig University was recently interviewed for a report by the BBC on the biodegradation of plastic waste. The story covers recent research results obtained by the University of Edinburgh, UFZ Leipzig, the London-based company, Biohm and the French company, Carbios. While the approach to degrade PET and polyurethane plastic waste using enzymes is promising, its application for the recycling of PET bottles on a larger scale is still limited due to energy-requiring pretreatments and high cost of the process. MIPLACE is addressing these issues by improving the enzymatic degradation of PET and polyurethane and developing sustainable pretreatment methods for post-consumer PET materials. A link to the article can be found here.
