Enzyme-Embedded Biodegradable Plastic for Sustainable Applications: Advances, Challenges, and Perspectives

Global plastic production is increasing yearly, with packaging materials and disposable plastics accounting for a sizable portion of the total. Despite its apparent advantages, the resulting plastic waste accumulates in landfills and oceans, causing severe environmental and public health issues. Shifting from conventional plastics to biodegradable plastics (BPs) is increasingly being proposed as an efficient management of end-of-life plastics. While several BPs such as poly(lactic acid), poly(ε-caprolactone), and poly(hydroxyalkanoates) have been widely used, their biodegradation rates often do not meet the anticipated level under home-compost or other certain environments (e.g., soil, marine). Recently, enzyme-embedded BPs have emerged as an outstanding alternative to currently used synthetic plastics. It achieves rapid degradation and compostability by introducing a specific enzyme into the biodegradable polymer. In this context, this review aims to summarize the recent advances in the development of such superior biomaterials. It identifies and prioritizes the critical success factors required for the production of enzyme-embedded BPs. The review also discusses several challenges in the development and application of these innovative polymer materials.