{"id":168539,"date":"2023-07-28T20:29:08","date_gmt":"2023-07-29T01:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/making-renewable-infinitely-recyclable-plastics-using-bacteria"},"modified":"2023-07-28T20:29:08","modified_gmt":"2023-07-29T01:29:08","slug":"making-renewable-infinitely-recyclable-plastics-using-bacteria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/making-renewable-infinitely-recyclable-plastics-using-bacteria","title":{"rendered":"Making Renewable, Infinitely Recyclable Plastics Using Bacteria"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/making-renewable-infinitely-recyclable-plastics-using-bacteria2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Plastic waste is a problem. Most plastics can\u2019t be recycled, and many use finite, polluting petrochemicals as the basic ingredients. But that\u2019s changing. In a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41893-023-01160-2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">study published today in <em>Nature Sustainability<\/em><\/a>, researchers successfully engineered microbes to make biological alternatives for the starting ingredients in an infinitely recyclable plastic known as poly(diketoenamine), or PDK.<\/p>\n<p>The finding comes from collaboration among experts at three facilities at the Department of Energy\u2019s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab): the Molecular Foundry, the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), and the Advanced Light Source.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the first time that bioproducts have been integrated to make a PDK that is predominantly bio-based,\u201d said Brett Helms, staff scientist at the Molecular Foundry who led the project. \u201cAnd it\u2019s the first time that you see a bio-advantage over using petrochemicals, both with respect to the material\u2019s properties and the cost of producing it at scale.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plastic waste is a problem. Most plastics can\u2019t be recycled, and many use finite, polluting petrochemicals as the basic ingredients. But that\u2019s changing. In a study published today in Nature Sustainability, researchers successfully engineered microbes to make biological alternatives for the starting ingredients in an infinitely recyclable plastic known as poly(diketoenamine), or PDK. The finding [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168539","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\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}