Recycling Project Focuses on Enzymes that Can Break Down Plastics By 70%

With the support of the Valencian Institute of Business Competitiveness (IVACE), AIMPLAS, the Plastics Technology Centre, is developing the ENZPLAST2 project, whose aim is to develop new, more sustainable processes for producing, recycling and composting plastics.

The ENZPLAST2 project focuses on the use of enzymes for different applications in the plastics sector to develop new, more sustainable processes in line with green chemistry.

The use of enzymes has helped reduce the odor of dairy products and work is currently being done to separate multilayer packaging and improve biodegradation when composting different types of polymers, especially polyurethanes.

Funded by IVACE and co-funded by the European Union (ERDF) through the Spanish Autonomous Community of Valencia ERDF operational program (2014-2020), the ENZPLAST project focused in its first year on new methods for the synthesis of plastics that are safer for human health and more environmentally friendly.

In the second year of the project, under the name ENZPLAST2, a procedure is being developed to use microorganisms to eliminate odors from dairy packaging. In addition, treating polyurethane-type polymers with selected isolated microorganisms has been shown to help degrade these polymers by as much as 70%.

Finally, studies have also been carried out in the second year on including polymer-supported enzymes in a molten polymer to improve the biodegradation of different bio-plastics under aerobic and anaerobic digestion conditions.