The following submission statement was provided by /u/izumi3682:

Submission statement from OP. Note: This submission statement "locks in" after about 30 minutes, and can no longer be edited. Please refer to my statement they link, which I can continue to edit. I often edit my submission statement, sometimes for the next few days if needs must. There is often required additional grammatical editing and additional added detail.

Here is the paper.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo4626

From the article.

>Plastic waste is clogging up our rivers and oceans and causing long-lasting environmental damage that is only just starting to come into focus. But a new approach that combines biological and chemical processes could greatly simplify the process of recycling it.

>...a new approach that uses a chemical process to break down mixed plastic waste into simpler chemical compounds before genetically modified bacteria convert them into a single, valuable end product could point the way to a promising new solution to our plastic crisis.

>This new hybrid technique, outlined in a recent paper in Science, builds upon previous research that showed that a mixture of different kinds of plastics could be broken down and converted into an array of useful chemicals by oxidizing them with the help of a catalyst.

The article then goes into a complex discussion of how certain genetically modified bacteria can apparently perform this "breakdown" of plastics into useful chemicals. But the article demonstrates the true promise of this technology.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y6l41l/scientists_engineer_bacteria_to_recycle_plastic/ispt9yq/