Sustainable Development Impacts
The United Nations has emphasized through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that urgent action is needed to protect our planet and ensure sustainable development for future generations. Among these goals, Goal 4: Quality Education and Goal 17: Partnerships For the Goals are particularly relevant to the challenges of plastic pollution. Every year, millions of tons of petroleum-based plastics are produced, used briefly, and then discarded, persisting in landfills and oceans for centuries. This not only contributes to climate change but also disrupts ecosystems, endangers wildlife, and threatens human health through the spread of microplastics.
Polylactic acid (PLA) has emerged as a potential solution to this global issue. Unlike petroleum-based plastics, PLA is a biodegradable thermoplastic produced from renewable resources such as corn starch and sugarcane. Its production involves fermenting plant-based sugars into lactic acid, which is then polymerized into PLA—a material now widely used in compostable packaging, cups, and 3D printing filament. In principle, PLA offers a more sustainable alternative by decomposing water and carbon dioxide under industrial composting conditions, thus reducing long-term environmental damage.
However, PLA adoption has not met expectations. Its brittleness, sensitivity to heat and moisture, and higher production costs compared to petroleum-based plastics limit its applications. Furthermore, true biodegradability requires specialized industrial composting facilities that remain scarce worldwide, leading to confusion in recycling systems and contamination of waste streams. As a result, PLA often ends up in the same landfills as conventional plastics, undermining its environmental promise.
Our iGEM project addresses this gap by exploring a solution of replacing PLA with Plastic and enable PLA Degradation. Beyond the laboratory, we recognize that technology alone cannot solve the plastic crisis—it must be supported by effective policy and infrastructure. Therefore, we plan to submit a citizen’s proposal to the government in Taiwan, advocating for the establishment of industrial composting facilities, clearer waste management guidelines, and stronger incentives for adopting biodegradable plastics. Through this action, we aim to bridge scientific innovation with civic engagement, showing that youth voices can help shape national environmental policy.
By improving the metabolic pathway of PLA breakdown, we aim to create an efficient method to valorize PLA waste. This approach not only accelerates the degradation of PLA but also transforms it into ethanol, a valuable biofuel and chemical feedstock, supporting the vision of a circular bioeconomy.
found that the biggest barrier to promoting the topic is the misguided policies and the recycling mechanism that exclude PLA. From the target audience, we discovered the fact that most of them stay neutral when it comes to understanding the Taiwanese resin identification code. Most people would abandon the plastics they used and know nothing about what happens after. Some incineration or landfilling system remain an enigmatic lesson to the people. That is why aiming the quality education is to let people access the knowledge and familiarity with the plastics and their aftermath. The reason why our education values so much on teaching the people via board games and artwork resonate with our objective of selecting this goal.
We found that most people remain neutral in understanding the current policy’s code of conduct.
Throughout the activities including the Angel Heart Family and Changhua Christian Hospital. We shared the knowledge to people with disabilities, cancer, and their families that did not have opportunities like the healthy individuals to step out of their situation and learn. Therefore, we conducted an array of board games and artwork.
In this citizen’s petition, we once again promoted policies that can enable PLA plastics to restore its application in the society. From food packaging and household products to medical equipment, PLA all deserves chances to be an indispensable type of plastic. The government had previously promulgated the policies for the ban of one-time uses of PLA plastics. We decided to take implementation and strategies to inhibit these direct refusal to PLA plastic and our project on enabling its degradation. Although there lies severe and escalating environmental and social problems, the new measurements of efficient PLA degradation from the enhancement of currently commercialized enzymes should be done under the community’s awareness and the government’s support. We also pointed out the conventional petrochemical plastics, while offering advantages such as strength and low cost, suffer from a critical drawback: resistance to degradation, accumulating in landfills, depleting land resources, and creating a long-term sustainability crisis in waste management.
To comply with action, we searched on web for chances to engage in communications with partners. We found that there are citizen petition’s contest which enables a path for communication between the citizens and the government. We wrote a lot on our proposition and our workflow in managing the plastic wastes. We were also involved in the discussion with several companies we got to know from the visit to Leezen mart. With all these evidence, the citizen’s petition may be backed with more feasibility. It can serve as a direct and accountable blueprint for the government in enhancing the current policies on the PLA plastic.
The "Target Field" Approach
At the very beginning, we started to tackle the main issue which is broached for advocacy: The overwhelming contradiction between PLA’s theoretical sustainability and its practical limitations in disposal, recycling, and classification. This year, our team has worked on the degradation in the lab, but we gathered around in the meeting space of the lab, wondering what can we do outside of here to amend the current limitations in disposal, recycling, and classification? We pondered this because of several reasons; What we learned from Da-Fung recycling company is that PLA is mis-sorting with PET, making them less discernible and hard to distinguish from the stream. Hence, as the recycling companies fail to classify them for regulation in recycling effectively, the Taiwanese government put as much effort to help resolve the issue, which the policies of reusing products are advocated to the people, and one-time uses of PLA plastics products were officially banned. This engages a lot of ideology from the GreenPeace organization, however; it is difficult to satisfy every scenario since plastic has such a broad application and requirements. We also learned that many enterprises don’t want to bring back PLA plastics. We talked to scholars, and they analyzed what is currently happening in the market now is the fact that most people want to stay in the current way they make money, putting in PLA requires a stagnation in their current business because they are need to put more effort and time into rebuilding a mechanism or advocating for PLA plastics. If PLA plastics can be really biodegradable and degraded, the values of the current plastic types would be diminished. All these factors build up to the predicaments of bringing back PLA plastics.
We do not think PLA is no longer hopeful; we want it to replace the current petroleum-based plastics that would also post threats to the environment. PLA is from a renewable and sustainable resource; being able to bring it back to society is feasible.
Therefore, we brainstormed and drew a lot on the whiteboards to contemplate what measures we can take to address this huge hole in the world’s realization of plastic use. We planned big, once started thinking about establishing type 8 for PLA, so the recycling framework could run better. However, it links to direct and complex allegations against the enterprises and the government’s policy, which would also be less supported. As mentioned, we began by gathering a large amount of knowledge to understand the local communities. From that day, we have narrowed down to plausible logistics — even though any propositions to reintroduce PLA are widely debated — and avoid policy bottlenecks. We researched and came up with the idea of a “Target Field Approach”.
This concept was known as we found out there were some companies in the United States that allowed only PLA plastics in a specific location, such as a baseball stadium. When people attend games, any beverages or desserts would be served with PLA plastics. If these similar mechanisms could be brought to our campus or other locations, that would also reintroduce PLA to specific demographics within a target field, for example, our students who enjoy drinking every day.
We rearranged the concept a little bit, so we pinned posters around the campus first to let people understand the essence of this PLA project and the goal of this Target Field Approach. By this effective promotion and education, the Target Field Approach would be valued as a viable application of PLA plastics without conflicting with the policies, yet fixing the problems of disposal, recycling, and classification.
It addresses the issue of disposal because often times people neglect the plastic products as they finish their food or drink, but a target field has a smaller scope to teach a certain number of people the correct way of disposing of plastic waste. That is valuable because one small impact could contribute to other ones as they walk off the campus and meet the same scenario again. It also helps the recycling and classification to become easier because we declared that only PLA could be used in the target field. The wastes we collect would all be PLA and not other types of plastics. We will collect the waste and find potential partners for compost sites.
Target Field Activity
We have run the Target Field Approach activities for a few times. We had advocated and provided PLA cokes or black tea for the people attending the activities. Including the faculties’ banquet, freshmen homecoming, and the parents-teachers association night. The plastics were all properly classified, and we have collected the PLA plastics to continue the further plans. In the future, we’ve also thinking of continuing this approach to let it become more conventional. Similar to the American baseball games, some of our sports game could be themed as “Sustainable PLA Game” for basketball or football to let more people acknowledge the importance of PLA degradation and usage with all the joys.
The impact we had were strong and unwavering. People knew more about PLA plastics by practically using them. With only words, people listen. However, with the cups and utensils used by them in special occasions, they know it better, and they know us better of why we are doing the project. One small act contributes to a great impact in the community.
This approach is effective, simple, and creative. We have seek a sustainable development within our school for PLA plastics, and the success that is demonstrated here would be expanded to the outside community. We believe Target Field Approach is giving PLA a promising prospect as we’ve observed so far.