What do we need to provide a solution?

What would it take to dispose of the million tons of plastic residues we discard every year?

Would recycling be the ultimate solution? No, not really. Recycling as it is does not provide any relief to plastic waste accumulation.

However, BIO-RECYCLING might.

What we need to do is being capable of:

1) degrading plastics

2) controlling the degradation process, knowing the smaller molecules deriving from it, which

can be re-utilized, avoiding the generation of small plastic debris or microplastics.

The circle closes if this is achieved via biological means.

What Plasticentropy represents is an open path towards the characterization of such biological means.

Plasticentropy is based on insect biotechnology: we use insects to identify, characterize and eventually deploy insect enzymes to degrade plastic residues into recyclable small molecules.

This is happening, this is real.

Plasticentropy focuses on several lepidopteran and coleopteran larvae, the star being the wax worm, as the larvae of lepidopteran Galleria mellonella are commonly called.

Plasticentropy advances and new discoveries.

At Plasticentropy we discovered that enzymes produced by the wax worm are the responsible for plastic degradation.

These enzymes work fast, at room temperature and produce oxidation and depolymerization of polyethylene.

This discovery lays the based for biotechnological and industrial implementation in view of solving the plastic waste environmental threat, one of the challenges of 21st century.