Inside a bioreactor in the laboratory of the France-based startup Carbios, pulverized PET plastic waste—the kind of plastic found in drink bottles and polyester clothing—is mixed with water and ...

Tracking individual enzymes during the breakdown of cellulose for biofuel production has revealed how several roadblocks slow this process when using plant material that might otherwise go to waste.

Of the 10 billion metric tons of plastic that humans have produced so far, only a small fraction has been recycled. Most of it sits in landfills or in the environment, where it could take centuries to ...

Researchers working for industrial development company Carbios have created a mutant bacterial enzyme that can break down plastic bottles for recycling in only a couple of hours, according to The ...

Most of the plastic we use doesn’t get recycled. Instead, it ends up in landfills, where it can take as long as 450 years for it to fully decompose. Engineers and scientists at the University of Texas ...

More than 300 million tons of plastic are produced annually worldwide. Most take hundreds of years to break down, and even then, they just splinter into tiny microplastic pieces that will likely never ...

A gross fact of life is that we’re all ingesting plastic. Turtles eat plastic. Birds eat plastic. And one study found that humans eat a credit card worth of plastic each week. Now, scientists have ...

New research by Penn State researchers reveals how several molecular roadblocks slow the breakdown of cellulose for biofuels. Here, Daguan Nong, assistant research professor of biomedical engineering, ...