Team:Pasteur Paris/Description
PlastiCure
The Problem:
Every year, more and more plastics are produced. In 2000, 190 million tons of plastic were produced in the world, whereas today, approximatively 300 million tons of plastic are produced. The most produced types of plastic are polyethylene (PE), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polypropylene (PP).
However, today, the treatment of plastic waste is not adapted to this exponential production… In 2012, 25.2 million tons of plastic waste were produced in Europe, among which only 26 % were recycled, while 36 % were burned in order to produce energy and the remaining 38 % were dumped or buried. In the end, this plastic accumulate in nature and pollute our ecosystem, especially the oceans. (Source: http://www.planetoscope.com/petrole/989-production-mondiale-de-plastique.html)
The problem is accentuated by the fact that plastic waste are microparticles: in our oceans, more than 90% of the plastic particles are smaller than 5 mm, which makes it almost impossible to clean the oceans. The worst danger comes from invisible plastic: the oxidation, but especially the ultraviolet radiation, cause fragmentation of plastics smaller and smaller, which can reach 20 micrometers in diameter. Today, the particles are becoming small enough to enter in our food chain. (Source: http://app.dumpark.com/seas-of-plastic-2/#oceans)
Our solution:
PlastiCure is a biological system based on E. coli designed to degrade plastics and use the degradation products to produce bio-active compounds. The challenge of the project is to coupling these two biosynthetic pathways in one system.
By engineering the metabolism of E. coli we want to create a system able to produce a curative product and in the same time help to address the issue of plastic pollution.
The idea here is first to create a new way to treat plastic waste but also to produce from plastic a novel profitable transformation product that will increase efforts in plastic recycling.
