Polyester is derived from fossil fuels and is the most widely-used clothing fibre in the world. Since it is not biodegradable efforts have been on for a long to recycle it and use it in the production of textile products.
The most commonly used method in this regard has been to recycle PET bottles into polyester fibers. That requires a lot of energy and could not be applied to used clothing. Researchers have finally developed an enzyme that degrades the reduced single-use plastics, including PET, to their chemical building blocks, leading to safe and energy-efficient recycling.
Researchers at the University’s Centre for Enzyme Innovation are now experimenting to develop an enzyme to degrade polyester textiles similarly. The researchers realize that it would not be an easy task. But the research, if successful, would enable the reuse of polyester textiles that account for 60 percent of worn clothes. The process of recycling synthetic fabrics using enzymes will not be an easy one. It is estimated that these textiles account for 60 percent of clothes that are worn globally.
These oil-based materials that have dyes content and residues of chemicals used in their processing become even more difficult to degrade through natural processes. Developing an enzyme capable of eating polyester clothing is a challenge that scientists have at hand.
Different enzymes will first be tested in the laboratory and the ones that perform best would be selected for a larger-level experiment on polyester clothing. Researchers hope that they would be able to develop an enzyme capable of deconstructing the PET in waste textiles into a soup of simple building blocks for conversion back into new polyesters. They want a system that uses plastic in the same way we use glass or tin cans – infinitely recycled. The research, which is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), will start at the end of January 2023 and last for 18 months.
