Ideonella sakaiensis is a bacterium from the genus Ideonella and family Comamonadaceae capable of breaking down plastic. The bacteria were isolated from outside a plastic bottle recycling facility in 2016 by a team of researchers led by Kohei Oda of Kyoto Institute of Technology and Kenji Miyamoto of Keio University. The bacterium first uses PETase, an enzyme that works with water, to break down plastic. It then breaks it down further using MHETase, another enzyme that further reacts with water to break down the plastics into terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol. Thus, a complex plastic polymer is enzymatically digested to much simpler form as glycol. It is Gram-negative, aerobic, and rod-shaped. It does not form spores. The individual cells of the organism are motile and have a single flagellum. I. sakaiensis tests positive for oxidase and catalase. The bacterium grows at a pH range of 5.5 to 9.0 (optimally 7 to 7.5) and a temperature of 15–42 °C (optimally at 30–37 °C).