Enzymatic Recycling

How Two Enzymes Take a Polyester-Cotton Blend Apart — and Give You Glucose and Plastic Monomers Back

A novel dual-enzyme system selectively breaks down polyester-cotton blends, converting cotton into glucose and polyester into its original plastic monomers. This enzymatic approach offers a low-energy, modular pathway for recovering valuable materials from blended textile waste, overcoming limitations of traditional mechanical recycling.