BioRep S.A.C.

Impressively, the modified enzyme also reduced the amount of time it takes for the plastic to degrade from months to a just single week.

The process, called depolymerization, has the added benefit of allowing the broken down monomers to be reconstituted back into virgin PET plastic, a potentially revolutionary way of recycling the astronomical amounts of plastic waste we've accumulated.

That all depends, though, on figuring out a reliable and affordable way to scale up and industrialize the process.

Virgin Plastic
The fact that PET plastic can be turned back into virgin plastic is a big deal.

"This has advantages over traditional belt recycling," Hal Alper, professor in chemical engineering and author on the paper, told Vice. "If you were to melt the plastic and then remold it, you'd start to lose the integrity of the plastic each round that you go through with recycling."

This new method, however, can be used to make "virgin PET plastic each and every time," Alper added.

Scientists Claim New Enzyme Can Break Down Plastic in a Single Week Scientists used machine learning to discover a new enzyme that could speed up the process of plastic breaking down significantly, Vice reports.