ENZYME BASED RECYCLING PROCESSES

Abstract

Novel strategies allowing environmentally friendly recycling of plastics are strongly needed. Enzymes have shown high potential, especially for the recovery of building blocks from multilayer materials which will be discussed in this paper. It has been shown that enzymes can specifically hydrolyze and solubilize certain components of blended packaging materials or mixed wastes. This allows a step—wise recovery of valuable building blocks which can be used for re-synthesis or for bioproduction (e.g. recovered glucose). However, despite the high potential of biocatalysts, even more efficient enzymes are required for economic industrial implementation. In this paper, which is based on a contribution to the SUM 2022 conference, we will consequently demonstrate how enzyme discovery can lead to more powerful tools for plastics recycling and provide some examples.