Enzymes’ Power for Plastics Degradation

Plastics are everywhere in our modern way of living, and their production keeps increasing every year, causing major environmental concerns. Nowadays, the end-of-life management involves accumulation in landfills, incineration, and recycling to a lower extent. This ecological threat to the environme...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Chemical reviews 2023-05, Vol.123 (9), p.5612-5701
Main Authors: Tournier, Vincent, Duquesne, Sophie, Guillamot, Frédérique, Cramail, Henri, Taton, Daniel, Marty, Alain, André, Isabelle
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Catalysis
Chemical Sciences
Commodities
End of life
Environmental Engineering
Environmental Sciences
Enzymes
Incineration
Landfills
Plastic debris
Plastics - metabolism
Polyamide resins
Polyamides
Polyester resins
Polymers
Polyolefins
Polyurethane
Polyurethanes
Recycling
Waste disposal sites
Waste treatment
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Plastics are everywhere in our modern way of living, and their production keeps increasing every year, causing major environmental concerns. Nowadays, the end-of-life management involves accumulation in landfills, incineration, and recycling to a lower extent. This ecological threat to the environment is inspiring alternative bio-based solutions for plastic waste treatment and recycling toward a circular economy. Over the past decade, considerable efforts have been made to degrade commodity plastics using biocatalytic approaches. Here, we provide a comprehensive review on the recent advances in enzyme-based biocatalysis and in the design of related biocatalytic processes to recycle or upcycle commodity plastics, including polyesters, polyamides, polyurethanes, and polyolefins. We also discuss scope and limitations, challenges, and opportunities of this field of research. An important message from this review is that polymer-assimilating enzymes are very likely part of the solution to reaching a circular plastic economy.
ISSN:0009-2665
1520-6890
DOI:10.1021/acs.chemrev.2c00644