The relevant test for plastic recycling is not only whether waste can be broken down, but whether the recovered material can re-enter production. In a release published April 9, 2020, INRAE described research published the day before in Nature by Toulouse Biotechnology Institute and Carbios. The team reported an engineered enzyme breaking down 90% of PET over 10 hours. [shared-558cd93f232a1af991630bb6338f85c435b5b8d7db9ca63c66b6e77915bb151d]
PET is used in bottles, food packaging and polyester textiles; this result was specific to PET, not plastics generally. The reported process separated the polymer into terephthalic acid and mono ethylene glycol. With Critt Bio-Industries at INSA Toulouse, Carbios purified those components and used them to make new bottles, demonstrating a production loop rather than just laboratory breakdown. [shared-558cd93f232a1af991630bb6338f85c435b5b8d7db9ca63c66b6e77915bb151d]
That distinction matters to competition: a recovered feedstock could offer manufacturers another input, but a demonstration alone says nothing about who can supply it at scale or at what price. The release reports no commercial deployment, costs, profitability or measured environmental impact. The thesis would need evidence on those terms—and on whether recycled output can reliably meet manufacturers’ needs—to move beyond technical promise. [shared-558cd93f232a1af991630bb6338f85c435b5b8d7db9ca63c66b6e77915bb151d]