Enzymatic Degradation of Synthetic Plastics: New Insights

Since plastic has been used in most industries and sectors, including building and construction, packaging, electronics, healthcare, and transportation, pollution from plastic has become a global issue. Due to the ever-increasing strain this has placed on the ecosystem, many scientists and environmentalists are focusing on developing strategies to counteract this threat. Numerous investigations have been conducted to discover how to harness the undiscovered capacities of bacteria that can use plastics as their only source of carbon to naturally break down plastics since the discovery of microbial enzymes that can act on plastic in its natural environment and since it is a much faster and more effective method than others, enzymatic breakdown of plastics has been suggested to serve this goal. This study provides an overview of the use of enzymes from several sources to break down plastics and future research opportunities in this field.