One day we may eat plastic bottles

No, don’t be alarmed, it’s not happening anytime soon. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland have recently published research that could one day led to us humans eating vanilla derived from biodegraded plastic bottles. The research was published in the respected journal Green Chemistry and focused on how the bacterium Escherichia Coli took apart polyethylene terephthalate polymer PET and left vanillin, used widely in the food and cosmetic industries as a by product.

The researchers believe that the plastic derived vanillin is likely to be safe for human consumption but further research is still needed. Around the world around one million non-recyclable plastic bottles are sold every minute and of those only 14 per cent are recycled into opaque fibres used in garment and carpet production.