The plastic emergency
Plastics are essential materials in our lives, but they show a problem: they are difficult to degrade. As a consequence, 79% of the plastic waste is stored in landfills or released into the environment.
Taking advantage of microbes
Some bacteria can degrade common plastics such as polyethylene (PET) or polyurethane (PU) by secreting enzymes. In addition, certain species can be modified to use these materials as food to obtain energy.
A circular solution
MIPLACE will develop a process that uses plastic waste as a feedstock for engineered microbial communities. These microbes will transform it into the raw materials used to create a sustainable plastic, Bio-PU, that can enter the cycle once thrown away.
LATEST NEWS
MIPLACE highlighted at Grand Challenges Seminar
11/05/23 - Project coordinator, Dr Jose Jimenez, was delighted to talk about the work of MIPLACE at 'The Plastic Crisis' seminar organised by the MPLS Doctoral Training Centre at the [...]
MIPLACE holds its final General Assembly
28/04/23 - The final General Assembly of the MIPLACE project took place this week. Partners met online on Tuesday 25th April for a day of presentations and discussions reflecting on [...]
MIPLACE coordinator contributes to Nature article
20/04/23 - MIPLACE coordinator, Dr Jose Jimenez, has contributed to an interesting article recently published in Nature highlighting different approaches for tackling plastic pollution. The article, 'Three ways to solve [...]
Vanillin from PET waste
13/02/23 - partners attending a recent MIPLACE seminar were pleased to welcome Dr Joanna Sadler from the University of Edinburgh. Dr Sadler gave a fascinating talk on the 'microbial synthesis [...]
New Pseudomonas putida publications
25/01/23 - Congratulations to Dr Jose Jimenez and Dr Alice Banks (MIPLACE partners) and colleagues on the publication of two papers describing studies with Pseudomonas putida. This is an important [...]
Q & As on emerging biotechnological applications
14/12/22 - Dr Jose Jimenez, MIPLACE coordinator, recently took part in a Q & A session regarding emerging biotechnologies and their applications. The interview was organized for SECRETed, a project [...]
PARTNERS
MIPLACE project is funded under the 2nd ERA BioTech Joint Transnational Call