5inister
Renaissance Man
I have recently been thinking of a way to stop the universe from being flooded with PET bottles. While there have been many efforts to recycle PET most of these strategies fail to have real long term effects or to solve the problem of production once oil runs out. Since bottling is a habit deeply rooted in our culture I decided to think of a way in which PET might be substituted by a biodegradable and renewable material.
The idea for my material came from the exoskeleton of arthropods (the part that makes roaches crunch under your shoes). Exoskeletons are made from polymerized sugars that form a material known to smart people as chitin. The biosynthesis of chitin is well known and chitin has been produced in vitro before. The idea is to extract (or manufacture) the enzymes that synthesize chitin and chemically attach them to a bottle-shaped mold. The mold is later filled with N-acetylglucosamine which polymerizes to chitin through the action of the enzymes.
This process would allow the creation of plastic-like materials from sugar that can be obtained from plants. Chitin can also be rapidly degraded by fungi and bacteria so products made out of this material won't contribute to solid waste or floating plastic patches and may be recycled to make fertilizers, cloth, livestock fodder, etc.
However miraculous this material might seem the solution to the problem of plastic waste must not relay only on miracles and technical innovation but also in changes on the way we consume and dispose of products. Being responsible on what we buy and where it ends up should always be the first thing a green thinker thinks of.
