The Design

With our solution and constructs in place, the OLS SynBio team has focussed intently on implementing our project into the real world. We had many questions about how we were going to introduce our idea into actual sorting facilities. Finally, we came to a conclusion with our prototype. In the future, we hope to place our system into a sorting facility in order to increase the efficiency of sorting and provide a solution to the global crisis of plastic in our environment. Over many months of discussion, researching, and brainstorming we designed a prototype model. While brainstorming ideas for our prototype and how we were going to implement it into today’s society, we had to discuss many conflicts such as the safety of our solution entering the recycling facilities, how it was going to affect the workers, and if facilities even were interested in incorporating our system.

Before brainstorming a biological marker to tag on to the plastic we researched existing forms of sorting plastic. This includes manual sorting, which is dangerous, and expensive sorting technologies, such as laser scanners. With these being the main sorting method, we created a bio-tag and a prototype that goes alongside it, which implements existing, inexpensive technology. We started off with many design aspects when creating our prototype. We have been adapting existing technology to work best with the bio-tag. As We have collaborated with the OLS High School Robotics team to help further the realism of our prototype. The optical scanner that detects the mCherry on the PET plastics was put to the test by the robotics team. As a result of all their hard work and engineering skills, they have successfully manufactured a robot that can detect certain colours. One major issue regarding the biological marker is that it can raise some ethical concerns regarding the safety of humans. To address this, the bio-tag is going to be a purified protein. This means that no live cells are going to come in contact with the plastic. With the bio-tag created, many peoples main concern was how much of it was going to come in contact with the environment, workers, and facilities. Our team decided that a bath of the protein was the best option to eliminate an aerosol effect that a spray or waterfall could create. By putting the plastics in the bath there is a less chance of contamination of the biological solution within the recycling facilities.

The PET-ase is an enzyme that naturally binds to PET plastic, and the mCherry RFP it is paired with will visually indicate when the protein has adhered. The hydrophobin is “water-fearing” and will therefore bind to several surfaces. However, for this project, it will be used to help adhere the PET-ase specifically to PET plastic. We are using the four proteins in combination with each other and test their effectiveness at tagging PET plastic.

Implemented prototype, what could be seen in a sorting facility.