{"id":160326,"date":"2023-03-15T14:23:53","date_gmt":"2023-03-15T19:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/enzymes-could-make-it-cheaper-to-recycle-waste-polyester-textiles-and-bottles-than-making-them-from-petroleum"},"modified":"2023-03-15T14:23:53","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T19:23:53","slug":"enzymes-could-make-it-cheaper-to-recycle-waste-polyester-textiles-and-bottles-than-making-them-from-petroleum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/enzymes-could-make-it-cheaper-to-recycle-waste-polyester-textiles-and-bottles-than-making-them-from-petroleum","title":{"rendered":"Enzymes could make it cheaper to recycle waste polyester textiles and bottles than making them from petroleum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/enzymes-could-make-it-cheaper-to-recycle-waste-polyester-textiles-and-bottles-than-making-them-from-petroleum.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>What do a T-shirt, a rug, and a soda bottle have in common? Many are made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a ubiquitous plastic that revolutionized the materials industry after it was patented in the 1940s.<\/p>\n<p>Created from petroleum refining, PET is a material known for its durability and versatility. It is easily molded into airtight containers, woven into durable carpets, or spun into polyester clothing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe reality is that most PET products\u2014especially PET clothing and carpeting\u2014are not recycled today using conventional <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/recycling\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">recycling<\/a> technologies,\u201d explained Gregg Beckham, senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and CEO of the U.S. Department of Energy BOTTLE Consortium. \u201cThe <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/research+community\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">research community<\/a> is developing promising alternatives, including enzymes designed to depolymerize PET, but even these options have tended to lean on energy-intensive and costly preprocessing steps to be effective.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What do a T-shirt, a rug, and a soda bottle have in common? Many are made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a ubiquitous plastic that revolutionized the materials industry after it was patented in the 1940s. Created from petroleum refining, PET is a material known for its durability and versatility. It is easily molded into airtight [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}