Darwin Bioprospecting Excellence S.L. is participating in the European project ‘Microbial ENZYmes for treatment of non-recyCLEd plastic fractions’ (ENZYCLE), a 4-year BBI-RIA that has been funded by the European Commission with 4.5 M€. The main objective of this project is to valorise non-recyclable plastic fractions though enzymatic processes with the goal of obtaining added-value products. For this, and in the circular economy framework, enzymes with high hydrolytic activity against polyesters (PET) and polyolefins (PE and PP) will be identified, selected, efficiently produced and introduced into specific recycling processes for plastic fractions that are currently not recycled. Moreover, ENZYCLE will tackle the micro plastics issue and their high impact on health and environment.

The project, that begin on June 1st 2020, is coordinated by ITENE (Instituto Tecnológico del Embalaje, Transporte y Logística) and includes a total of 13 different partners from several European countries, including Spain, Netherlands, France, Austria, Italy and Germany. It must be noted that 5 out of the 13 partners are large companies: Depuración de Aguas de Mediterráneo SL, Soprema, Greiner Packaging International GmbH, Aliplast SPA, and Indorama Ventures Europe BV.

DARWIN has been granted around 330 K€ for the isolation and characterization of microbial strains and consortia that are able to degrade polyolefins, using culturing techniques coupled to genomic and transcriptomic analysis. These activities are fully aligned with DARWIN’s expertise in microbial bioprospecting.