Plastics can take hundreds of years to naturally degrade in the environment, something this new combination of enzymes can accomplish in a matter of days. Photo by Fachrul Reza/NurPhoto via Getty ...

Tracking individual enzymes during the breakdown of cellulose for biofuel production has revealed how several roadblocks slow this process when using plant material that might otherwise go to waste.

Of the 10 billion metric tons of plastic that humans have produced so far, only a small fraction has been recycled. Most of it sits in landfills or in the environment, where it could take centuries to ...

Inside a bioreactor in the laboratory of the France-based startup Carbios, pulverized PET plastic waste—the kind of plastic found in drink bottles and polyester clothing—is mixed with water and ...

Most of the plastic we use doesn’t get recycled. Instead, it ends up in landfills, where it can take as long as 450 years for it to fully decompose. Engineers and scientists at the University of Texas ...

Plastics have a lot of properties that have made them fixtures of modern societies. They can be molded into any shape we’d like, they’re tough yet flexible, and they come in enough variations that we ...

A gross fact of life is that we’re all ingesting plastic. Turtles eat plastic. Birds eat plastic. And one study found that humans eat a credit card worth of plastic each week. Now, scientists have ...

Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. From your phone battery to the Empire State Building, every single thing we as a species have created was made from ...

Humans dispose of 400 million tons of plastic every year. Newly designed enzymes could offer a route to breaking down some of that trash into useful molecules. Scientists have developed a new enzyme ...

New research by Penn State researchers reveals how several molecular roadblocks slow the breakdown of cellulose for biofuels. Here, Daguan Nong, assistant research professor of biomedical engineering, ...