BUCT - iGEM 2025 - Polygone

Why do plastics persist so long in the ocean?

Low-cost and lightweight plastic products are widely used in daily necessities, construction materials, packaging, textiles, and even household appliances. On average, each person consumes about 20.9 kg of plastic products per year.

By 2023, global plastic production had reached a staggering 430 million tons, yet only 3.9% of it was recycled and reintroduced into the market. The vast majority ends up as waste.

It is estimated that around 1.7 million tons of mismanaged plastic waste flows into the ocean every year, becoming a major source of marine pollution.

430M

Tons of plastic produced annually

3.9%

Plastic that gets recycled

1.7M

Tons enter oceans yearly

Impact on Marine Ecosystems

These plastics are killing marine animals, weakening oceanic climate resilience, and accelerating both acidification and warming of seawater.

Plastic debris accumulates in marine environments

Different types of marine life that are affected by plastic ingestion

A young sea turtle is often entangled in various plastic waste

Current Challenges

Although polyester plastics have been regarded as a degradable material due to the theoretical biodegradability of its ester bonds. However, in natural environments—which is usually under an inadequate condition for efficient decomposition—it tends to exist for decades or even longer. In deep-sea conditions (characterized by low temperature and high pressure), degradability of polyester plastics is even poorer, making them a core challenge of marine plastic pollution.

Even more concerning, recent data show that polyester fibers account for more than 50% of marine microplastics.

Fragmented microplastics are entering the food chain and water cycle, ultimately reaching our bloodstream, heart, and even brain. This poses a severe and direct threat to human health.

Current solutions for polyester plastic degradation—such as mechanical recycling, chemical recycling, and biological recycling—face challenges including high costs, high energy consumption, environmental risks, and limited applicability.

How can we achieve a low-cost, efficient, and sustainable solution to polyester plastic?

THIS IS WHAT POLYGONE HAS DONE!

Our Solution

We've developed a groundbreaking approach to address marine plastic pollution using synthetic biology and advanced enzyme technology.

Eco-Friendly

Non-toxic, biodegradable components only

High Efficiency

Rapid degradation even in harsh conditions

Marine-Safe

Designed to protect aquatic ecosystems

Innovative Enzymatic Degradation

Through synthetic biology, we engineered a polyester-degrading enzyme with broad substrate specificity, high catalytic activity, and strong thermal stability, while also enabling large-scale stable production. This approach achieves safe and eco-friendly biodegradation of polyester plastics, offering new hope for tackling polyester pollution.

To maximize its effectiveness, immobilized enzyme which is fused into the raw material to produce fully degradable polyester plastics is a feasible solution.

To enhance the application process, our further design is a monitoring platform derive from an enzyme-derived product.

As for production stage,our product can be directly applied into the process of plastic manufacturing, improving the degradability of polyester plastics in marine environments. This tends to suppress the roots of pollution, enabling fundamental control of marine polyester plastic pollution.

Moreover, to achieve a prolonging and sustainable implementation , a monitoring platform enables long-term tracking and degradation of existing microplastics, preventing their accumulation and blocking the risks of re-entrying into ecological cycles,providing a pragmatic measure to the “last mile” of marine plastic pollution management.

Through integrating laboratory innovations with practical plastic manufacturing, we provided a sustainable, recyclable solution and contributed to scalable production,which reduced the negative impacts of polyester pollution on marine ecosystems.

Future plans

Looking ahead, with continued advancements, our products and further applied platform could be scaled to industrialization, further lowering the expenditure of marine environment pollution mitigation and monitoring. Moreover,deploying our system in agricultural lands, polar regions, and other environments—to eliminate the polyester pollution threats o human society and the planet’s future sustainability

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