PET: Polyethylene Terephthalate -The Ubiquitous 500 ml Water Bottle

摘要

Only 10% of worldwide PET production is recycled. PET is associated with Single Use Plastics, used a few min and discarded. A PET bottle in a landfill takes 500 years to decompose. That same bottle in the ocean will break down into micro plastics that last 500 years. Micro-plastics are consumed by organisms as part of a food chain, which includes us! Since 2009, Coca-Cola distributed more than 35 billion PET bottles worldwide and introduced a PlantBottle packaging that converts sugars in plants into ingredients for fully recyclable PET plastic bottles. China stopped buying 2/3's of the world's recyclable plastic in 2018. Ideonella sakaiensis is a bacterium capable of producing enzymes that consume PET plastic as its' sole carbon and energy source. Producers of PET bottles are encouraging recycling, pursuing plant based PET and bacterial consumption of PET to promote decomposition in landfills and oceans as an alternative to recycling.