We investigated to what degree our project would be good for the world.
Our Human Practices work combined conversations with outside experts, visits to industry sites, and direct outreach to the public. We met with Dr. Averesch and Dr. Raviteja to understand the engineering constraints of working in space; we visited Poseidon Industries, a recycling facility, and Trade Wind Bio's Yilan laboratory to see industrial biotechnology in practice; and we surveyed everyday consumers to check that our project's premise, and our ability to explain it, held up outside the lab. Whatever the eventual scale of our project, our engineered bacterial strains would only ever be one link in a much larger supply chain, running from industrial recyclers through to the people who actually use and discard plastic, and this page is organized to follow that chain: expert input first, then industry, then the public.
Dr. Averesch gave a presentation on the engineering constraints of producing materials in space, which shaped how we think about resource use and system design for our own project.
From Dr. Averesch's presentation, we learned that one of the biggest challenges of space exploration is reducing the amount of materials that need to be launched from Earth. Since launch costs increase significantly with distance, future missions will need to rely more on in-situ manufacturing, which means producing materials and products directly on the Moon or Mars instead of transporting everything from Earth.
We also learned that the resources available depend on the destination. For example, Mars has access to carbon and nitrogen, while the Moon provides water and regolith (space soil). These differences directly affect how biological systems are designed and what materials can realistically be produced in each environment.
Another important takeaway was the role of microbes in creating a circular economy for space missions. Instead of treating plastic waste as trash, engineered microbes can break it down into smaller molecules and convert those materials into useful products such as new plastics, fibers, or biomass. This approach helps reduce waste while making better use of the limited resources available during long-duration missions.
Finally, we learned that the technologies being developed for space also have major benefits on Earth. Biological recycling offers a more sustainable alternative to traditional plastic production, which depends heavily on fossil fuels. Overall, the presentation showed that microbial engineering can help make future space missions more self-sufficient while also contributing to more sustainable manufacturing practices here on Earth.
During our discussion with Dr. Averesch, we asked about the challenges of developing biological systems for space and how enzymatic plastic recycling could fit into future missions. He explained that space systems are designed based on Equivalent System Mass (ESM) rather than traditional financial cost, meaning lightweight and compact technologies are often far more valuable than cheaper, heavier ones.
He also emphasized that the biggest technical hurdle is the fundamental engineering of the microbes themselves, since modifying microbial genomes and maintaining consistent performance takes significant time and effort. We learned that spacecraft size, strict containment requirements for genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and precise temperature control have a major influence on final system design.
Finally, Dr. Averesch explained that biological recycling systems could become vital for long-duration missions because they would allow astronauts to reuse plastic waste and produce useful materials, such as feedstock for 3D printing, drastically reducing the need for constant resupply from Earth.
Dr. Raviteja gave a presentation about the work of ResearchSat and the challenges of developing technology for space research. He explained that one of the biggest differences between Earth and space is microgravity, where objects float instead of falling. This unique environment allows scientists to perform experiments that cannot be carried out on Earth, especially in areas such as biotechnology, life sciences, and materials research.
ResearchSat focuses on making these kinds of experiments possible by developing reliable research platforms for space. He also explained that designing hardware and software for space requires much higher reliability because cosmic radiation can interfere with electronic systems. To reduce the risk of failures, engineers use redundant systems and additional software protections to ensure spacecraft continue operating correctly in the harsh space environment.
Another key topic of the presentation was the engineering challenges that still exist in space technology. Dr. Raviteja explained that one of the biggest unsolved problems is heat management. While heat on Earth can be transferred through conduction, convection, and radiation, convection is not possible in the vacuum of space, making it much harder to cool electronic components such as microchips.
He also discussed how technologies such as enzymatic plastic recycling and other biological systems must be redesigned for use in microgravity because liquids like water and oil behave very differently in space. Overall, we learned that although many technologies are first tested on Earth, they must be carefully adapted to function in space, and companies like ResearchSat are helping advance scientific research by overcoming these unique engineering challenges.
Our team visited Poseidon Industries, a recycling facility in Taoyuan, where we exchanged presentations with staff and toured the plant. Poseidon processes PET plastics, the same category of plastic our project targets, which made the visit directly relevant to our work. We also interviewed the facility's owner about the practical realities of recycling, both on Earth and, hypothetically, in space.
The owner described regulation as the company's single biggest challenge: different types of chemical recycling require different licenses and permits, and navigating that landscape consumes significant time and resources even within Taiwan, where the geography is comparatively small and collection is relatively feasible. He expected that recycling in space would face all of the same regulatory hurdles, compounded by the sheer cost of transport, since every material sent to space, and any waste brought back, carries the added expense of launching and returning it, on top of the challenge of designing plastics that can withstand the space environment itself.
Taiwanese textile and carbon-fiber companies, including 新光紡織 and 遠東新世紀, have invested in PET and polyester recycling for the past three to four decades, and the owner considers the underlying technology mature but still limited. Most current PET recycling is what he called basic chemical recycling: cleaning bottles, processing them into flakes, and remelting them, without fully breaking the polymer down into its monomer building blocks. He contrasted this with companies like Ambercycle, which chemically recycle PET and polyester fabrics into monomers such as dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) that can re-enter textile production. He was careful to distinguish this petrochemical route, which breaks PET into monomers for reuse in new polyester products, often through supply chains spanning multiple countries, from the biological recycling approach our project takes.
Asked whether partnering with large space corporations might bypass the licensing burden he described, the owner was doubtful; he expects the harder problem to be safety rather than paperwork, since no one yet knows whether plastics returning from space could carry contamination, and food or organic residue may pose even greater risks in that context. Most of this territory, he noted, remains undecided, and new permits or regulatory frameworks will likely need to be created specifically for it.
When we asked which plastics give the company the most trouble, the owner pointed to ABS, the plastic used throughout the tech industry in computer and phone casings, server components, and other housings designed to withstand the heat generated by running processors. Its durability, which makes it useful in electronics, is exactly what makes it so difficult to break down again.
The owner was encouraging about the biological approach itself, calling the addition of enzymes a genuinely novel angle, but he pressed us on feasibility: could it actually be commercialized and scaled? He pointed to PLA, a cornstarch-based bioplastic that saw a wave of promotion but never achieved lasting market share, as a cautionary example, and urged us to research why bioplastics have historically struggled to stay on the market rather than assuming ours would be different by default.
He also situated recycling within the broader plastic economy. Today's system still runs largely on fossil resources: crude oil is refined into naphtha, which feeds fuel and petrochemical production, including aviation. Improving the recycling loop, so that collected plastic waste flows back through recycling into naphtha production and then into new plastic pellets, creates a circular economy that gradually reduces dependence on virgin fossil inputs, decreases crude oil and naphtha demand, and makes better use of existing waste. He noted that newer sustainable packaging often mixes materials, such as paper, plastic, and aluminum, in ways that make recycling harder, and suggested that industries would do better to design packaging around a single, clearly recyclable material wherever possible.
Looking ahead twenty to thirty years, the owner expects pollution, carbon emissions, and sustainability to become defining challenges across the plastics and petrochemical industries, fields that already draw on far more than chemistry and engineering alone, including marketing, accounting, management, product design, and sales. He pointed out that different plastics already serve distinct roles in daily life. PET and polyester are used for bottles and textiles, PE for bags and food packaging, and PP for microwaveable containers like convenience-store meals, and argued that because plastic is so deeply woven into everyday life, meaningfully improving its sustainability will require collaboration across many industries and professions, not a single fix.
This company visit gave us direct insight into the industrial processes that support our project, which focuses on engineering bacteria capable of degrading PET plastic in space. Observing an active fermentation system helped us understand how bacterial cultures are maintained under carefully controlled temperature, oxygen, and nutrient conditions, and how enzyme production is integrated into large-scale biotechnology, reinforcing why optimizing bacterial growth matters for efficient PETase production. Seeing these processes at industrial scale strengthened our understanding of what it actually takes to move synthetic biology from a lab bench to a real-world application.
Our project addresses the growing challenge of plastic waste during long-duration space missions by engineering bacteria that produce PET-degrading enzymes, breaking plastic waste down into reusable monomers that can then be converted into useful products, for example through 3D printing, creating a circular resource system aboard spacecraft or future space stations. Recycling materials on-site could reduce dependence on Earth-based resupply missions while improving the sustainability of future space exploration. Throughout the project, our team has tried to hold onto a mindset centered on scientific curiosity and interdisciplinary learning: applying biotechnology to real environmental challenges, learning continuously from past iGEM projects, and communicating what we learn as clearly as possible, both to each other and to the public.
During our lab training, we gained hands-on exposure to core molecular biology techniques used throughout synthetic biology, including PCR primer design, DNA amplification and purification, colony PCR, DNA ligation, DNA sequencing, and enzyme activity analysis, alongside a discussion of how sequencing technologies evolved from Sanger sequencing through the Human Genome Project. The company also shared its long-term vision of deploying engineered bacteria aboard future space stations, with potential applications anticipated around 2028.
Trade Wind Bio's own main product line is lutein supplements for eye health, produced through bacterial fermentation, and the company more broadly works across industrial biotechnology, food science research, and enzyme production, including PET degradation research using PETase, which is why our team was able to collaborate with them so directly. We learned that successful fermentation depends on tightly controlled environmental conditions: continuous stirring distributes nutrients and oxygen evenly, and bacteria are highly sensitive to temperature, since conditions that are too high or too low can inhibit growth or kill the culture outright. Some strains, we learned, actually grow best under low-oxygen, anaerobic conditions, which shapes how a fermenter is run.
The facility runs fermenters at several scales: a 2.5-liter fully automatic sterilized fermenter for small-scale research and pilot work, a 10-liter unit for medium-scale cultivation, and a 250-liter unit for industrial production, alongside a vertical steam sterilizer for high-pressure sterilization of equipment and a smaller 5-liter fermenter used mainly to demonstrate how a fermentation system is assembled. We also observed yeast cells under a microscope, discussing their protein composition, DNA content, and overall cell structure, and learned that enzymes across biology are highly substrate-specific, with different enzymes dedicated to degrading plastics, breaking down fats, digesting sugars, or catalyzing biosynthesis reactions. Throughout the visit, safety was emphasized consistently: wearing gloves, handling chemicals carefully, washing immediately if anything contacted skin, avoiding headphones or unauthorized equipment use in the lab, never opening machinery while it runs at high speed, and following emergency procedures immediately if an incident occurred.
Much of our hands-on training centered on PCR, which amplifies DNA by mimicking natural replication through three repeating steps: denaturation, where high temperature separates the DNA strands; annealing, where primers bind to complementary sequences; and extension, where DNA polymerase synthesizes new strands from the template. After amplification, we practiced DNA purification to remove impurities and isolate the amplified product, though we did not perform restriction digestion or ligation ourselves during this training; purified samples were instead sent out to a sequencing company to determine their nucleotide sequence. We also learned the underlying chemistry of DNA ligation, in which T4 DNA ligase joins fragments together, typically by adding enzyme and ligation buffer to bind fragments into a circular recombinant plasmid.
To verify whether an insertion had worked, we learned about colony PCR, which checks for successful DNA insertion and confirms fragment size: a correct band indicates successful insertion, no band suggests the PCR failed outright, and an incorrect band size points to an incomplete or incorrect insertion. Reliable results throughout all of this depend on good experimental design, including appropriate temperature control, positive controls to confirm the method itself is working, and careful, skeptical interpretation of any negative result. We also learned enzyme activity can be measured quantitatively with analytical instruments that read optical absorbance, peak detection, sample and protein concentration, and loading volume, where a higher signal generally corresponds to greater enzyme concentration or activity, a technique we can apply directly when evaluating our own engineered enzymes.
Altogether, the company visit and laboratory training gave us a comprehensive introduction to both industrial biotechnology and the molecular biology techniques directly applicable to our own project. We came away understanding that successful fermentation depends on maintaining strict environmental conditions, particularly temperature, mixing, and oxygen availability, and that PCR, primer design, ligation, sequencing, and experimental controls each play a distinct role in constructing and verifying an engineered organism. Enzyme activity, we learned, can be measured quantitatively rather than assumed, giving us a concrete way to evaluate biological performance. More broadly, the visit reinforced how biology, chemistry, and engineering come together to build sustainable biotechnological solutions, and gave real practical grounding to the scientific foundation of our own iGEM project.
At iGEM, Human Practices teams can easily get starstruck when talking to exciting experts and visiting high-tech factories like the Poseidon Facility. However, our Human Practices team also reached out to ordinary consumers to talk about the future of recycling plastic. We surveyed roughly 40 members of the public at a Mother’s Day gathering and found a community that already understood the plastic pollution problem and was unusually receptive to biotechnology: 72.5 percent of respondents supported genetically modified organisms for plastic recycling, provided the technology did not harm human health or the environment. The full survey results and methodology are described on our Education page.