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18 | CURBING PLASTIC POLLUTION

John McGeehan
Professor of structural biology, Director of the Centre
for Enzyme Innovation at the University of Portsmouth
© Stefan Venter, UPIX Photography
(United Kingdom)

In your opinion, what is the main obstacle to the and increasingly appreciate the importance of being
generalisation of plastic recycling? connected. Some are even beginning to get together
I believe that the primary issue is the great diversity of in multi-disciplinary laboratories and pool their funds
plastics, meaning that many solutions have to be de- to develop ambitious projects. If we start to consider
veloped. Enzyme recycling is suitable for some plas- ourselves as a global team, and share tasks, we will
tics, such as polyesters, but we need different techno- increase our resources and our expertise, and that’s
logy for other polluting plastics, such as polyethylene very exciting!
and polypropylene. During the summit, a broad range
of technologies was presented, including mechanical, I think that experts, and we can see this with the ex-
chemical, biological and thermal based processes. traordinary energy emanating from this summit in Mo-
naco, are ready to take the step into this open science,
The second key issue is the fragmentation of initia- and not merely from an academic point of view. There
tives. In our Portsmouth laboratory alone, which has was a session devoted to industry, where companies
around thirty researchers, we carry out similar expe- like Amazon, Patagonia and Carbios showed that they
riments to other teams in laboratories all around the were keen to pool their efforts to reduce and manage
world. There are similar consortiums in the world but plastic waste. We need to foster high ambitions. It’s
currently they are not adequately inter-connected. such a dreadful problem… But the solutions have the
potential to generate genuine economic momentum.
Can this summit promote this type of collabora-
tion so that the plastic issue can be dealt with In your opinion, what actions should be imple-
more effectively? mented first?
This is exactly what we hope to encourage. We want For decades, the global economic model has deve-
to avoid duplication and prompt researchers to share loped a long supply chain based on the use of plastic.
new data, because this is what will hugely accelerate It is going to be extremely difficult to change that, in-
research and enable us to address this global pollu- cluding people’s habits. The first thing we need to do
tion. It’s an enormous challenge because scientific is of course reduce the unnecessary use of plastic.
competition has always been privileged! We need The second is to resolve the issue of its end of life. If
scientists, engineers, economists and environmen- we manage to resolve that, then plastic could become
talists to produce more inclusive science. Thousands a material of the future, provided that we use it in a
of researchers are working on this issue worldwide rational, specific and targeted way.