Page 14 - IAV Digital Magazine #526

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How Much Plastic Is In Your Vanilla Ice Cream?
That old plastic bottles can be turned into such items as carpet fibers and cloth- ing is news to no one. But what if they were used to make your next vanilla ice cream cone?
As odd (and unappetizing) as that may sound, scientists believe they have uncov- ered a means to convert old, dis- carded bottles into vanilla flavor- ing using a genet- ically engineered bacteria — a technological breakthrough that could help tackle the growing prob- lem of plastic waste.
What this process actually does is create something called “vanillin,” a compound that tastes and smells
like vanilla. Currently vanillin is extracted natu- rally from vanilla beans or made synthetically – most often from chemicals taken from fossil fuels. Since plastic bot-
tles contain plenty of fossil fuels, the scientists believe their technique could be a win- win for people and the planet...not to mention it pro- duces something
tasty to boot.
How exactly does their process work? As reported in Live Science: “Previous studies showed how to break down plas- tic bottles made
from polyethylene terephthalate into its basic subunit, known as tereph- thalic acid. In the new study, two researchers at The University of Edinburgh in Scotland geneti-
cally engi-
neered E.
coli bacteria to convert tereph- thalic acid into vanillin. Terephth alic acid and vanillin have very similar chemical compositions and the engineered bacteria only needs to make minor changes to the number of hydrogens and oxygens that are bonded to the same carbon backbone.
The researchers mingled their genetically engi- neered bacteria with terephthalic acid and kept them at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degree Celsius) for a day...About 79% of the terephthalic acid subsequently con- verted into vanillin”
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