Chinese scientists have developed a “living plastic” that self-destructs on command without creating microplastics, an advance that could help reduce the increasing burden of non-biodegradable waste .

Many plastic products today are designed for single use and the material can persist in the environment for years.

The “living plastic” contains microbes that release plastic-degrading enzymes and can be activated on command. Two strains of the common bacterium Bacillus subtilis , working together, completely break down the material within six days without creating microplastics, scientists show in a study published in the journal ACS Applied Polymer Materials.

“The realisation that traditional plastics persist for centuries, while many applications like packaging are short-lived, led us to ask: could we build degradation directly into the material’s life cycle?” study author Zhuojun Dai from the Shenzhen Institute of Synthetic Biology said.

“By embedding these microbes, plastics could effectively ‘come…