After single-use plastic bags and straws, PET bottles are among the most common contributor to marine plastics pollution, and scientists at the University of Edinburgh say they have found an innovative solution to tackle the problem. In 2018, researchers created an engineered enzyme to break down PET into one of its building blocks, terephthalic acid. Back then, the enzyme was created by linking two other enzymes found in a plastics-eating bug discovered at a waste site in Japan in 2016. That, however, is not the big news.

The big news is that now UK scientists have found a way to convert the resulting terephthalic acid into vanillin – the tiny compound that gives all our sweetmeats, ice creams and baked goods the to-die-for aroma and flavour. How did the scientists do that? With engineered E coli bacteria that transform the acid under pre-set temperatures and conditions. It might not sound appetising, given the general image of E coli in our heads, but upcycling waste PET bottles to create vanilla flavouring sure sounds like a pretty sweet deal for the environment. And if you think using an intestinal bacteria to make a food additive is disgusting, never do a web search combining the terms “vanilla” and “beavers”.