To deal with the contamination of the earth caused by waste, especially plastics, tons of efforts are being tried to reduce the waste. Meanwhile, many scientists are also contributing to the discovery and research on finding new ways to cope with plastics; one of the new ways was microbes that decompose plastics. And, this field is continually growing and invested, looked forward to utilize in the future. 

Plastics can be classified into various categories: PE, PUR, PBAT, PLA, etc. Among these, the most common type of them is PE(PET), which is transparent and light. We can easily find this type in water bottles or Coca-Cola. Being advantageous in its materials, PE is the representative type of recycling. 

Many countries such as Switzerland, and China have tried to figure out the actual and also potential function of these microorganisms dealing with plastics.  A research team of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) revealed in the scientific journal "Frontiers in Microbiology" that bacteria and fungi—neodevriesia and lachnellula— that decompose various plastics well at 15℃ in polar regions such as the Alps and Greenland and Svalbard. Although there were many trials to apply those helpful microbes in real life, the original microorganisms all commonly needed high temperatures for the enzymes, which contribute to decomposition, to react. Because of this, the method using microbes couldn’t achieve Net-zero during the process of decomposition. Thus, this finding seems such an innovative finding in this field. Of course, there are some limitations to immediately use: it actually cannot decompose the PE yet. But, it was meaningful that this kind of microorganisms could decompose at least more than one type of plastic. 

Korea is one of the countries that makes some efforts for research advancement about microbes. The research team of Jeonnam University recently found new microorganisms that have the function to decompose. The surprising thing is that this new microorganism can decompose PE, which was the last problem of the Switzerland team. This team discovered it 15 meters underground in a landfill. It also discovered enzymes involved in previously unreported PE decomposition and reported chemical changes in PEs through enzyme reactions. Since this material accounts for about a quarter of plastic production, these findings will help further research in the future.