Ultra-fast development of biocatalysts for textile recycling

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Around 110 million tonnes of synthetic fibres are produced worldwide each year for the textile and fashion industry, but the end-of-life for textile products is either downcycling into lower grade materials (rags, carpets, insulation materials, etc), being sent to landfill or incinerated. None of the polymers used in the textile industry are currently recycled back into fibres (less than 1% fibre-to-fibre recycling applied for cotton). Evoralis is an early-stage startup from the University of Cambridge with a mission to enable true and sustainable depolymerisation and recycling of synthetic polymers. It uses a unique ultrahigh-throughput screening platform based on a microfluidic technology to find and improve biocatalysts that can break down plastics into their constituent building-blocks. The corresponding monomers can be recovered, purified and re-used in making new fibres for virgin-grade materials. Using this technology, biocatalysts can be tested at unprecedented speed, making the discovery of plastic-degrading enzymes up to 1,000 times faster than using any other current screening method.The project will implement this technology to identify and optimise enzymes that can depolymerise nylon 6 with higher efficiency and increased robustness. These enzymes will be tested on textiles provided by the fashion industry in small-scale textile recycling bioprocesses to selectively degrade nylon out of a mixture of textiles.