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Andy Pickford, the professor at Portsmouth, is familiar with the limitations, but thinks many good targets still exist.
朴茨茅斯大学教授安迪·皮克福德很熟悉这些局限性，但他认为仍存在许多不错的目标。
“Nylon is tough but doable,” he says. “Polyurethanes, also doable.”
他说：“尼龙虽难以降解，但仍是可行的。聚氨酯也是如此。”
The scientists at Carbios agree, predicting that they will have a process to recycle nylon within a few years.
Carbios公司的科学家团队对此表示同意，并预测他们将在几年内开发出回收尼龙的工艺。
If those predictions come to pass, about a quarter of all plastics would become truly recyclable; if there turns out to be an enzyme match for all the plastics that are theoretically susceptible to being broken down, just under half of all plastic waste could be on the table.
如果这些预测成真，大约四分之一的塑料将真正实现可回收; 如果所有理论上易降解的塑料都能找到相匹配的酶，那近一半的塑料垃圾都可能被回收利用。
Even so, what most scientists are working towards is a world in which enzymes are set to work turning old plastic into new plastic.
即便如此，大多数科学家都在努力创造一个利用酶将旧塑料转化为新塑料的领域。
This is frustratingly limited in scope.
令人沮丧的是，这种回收方法范围有限。
It makes economic sense – but it is still producing plastic, and using energy to do so.
虽然具有经济意义，但这种方法仍然会生产塑料并消耗能源。
And while recycling may slow down new plastic production, it won’t help us claw back the unfathomable amount of plastic that we have already released into the world, much of which remains too widespread, difficult and dirty to recapture.
虽然回收利用可能会减缓新塑料的生产，但却无法帮助我们收回我们已经释放到世界上的不计其数的塑料，其中大部分分布过广、收集困难、回收过程肮脏。
No one has yet found a microbe that can truly transform an untreated piece of plastic in the way they transform organic matter: starting with a pile of carbon – say, a human body – and leaving nothing but the indigestible skeletal bits within a year or so.
到目前为止，我们还没有发现能够像分解有机物那样真正分解未经处理的塑料的微生物，这一过程就像在大约一年的时间里将一堆碳（例如人体）分解成仅剩无法降解的骨骼碎片一样。
When scientists find plastic-eating microbes on bottles at the dump, or on rafts of rubbish in the ocean, the best these microbes can do is a kind of light gnawing.
当科学家在垃圾场的塑料瓶堆或海洋上漂浮的垃圾岛上发现了“啃食”塑料的微生物时，这些微生物最多只算是在轻微地啃食。
Like a teething baby, they aren’t going to have much effect on anything that isn’t softened and spoon-fed to them.
就像对待刚长牙的婴儿一样，如果不对塑料进行软化和预处理，这些微生物对任何东西都不会产生太大的影响。
But microbes do have the ability to nullify some of the planet’s most noxious toxins, cleansing entire landscapes in the process.
但微生物确实有能力使地球上一些最有害的毒素失效，并在这个过程中净化整个景观。
This works best on chemicals that have been present on earth for millions of years, allowing microbes to develop a taste for them.
这种方法对在地球上已经存在了数百万年的化学物质效果最好，因为微生物对这些化学物质拥有分解能力。
When the Exxon Valdez dumped 41m litres of oil into the Gulf of Alaska in 1989, coverage of the cleanup focused on images of environmentalists scrubbing oil-sodden seals and puffins.
1989年，埃克森·瓦尔迪兹号向阿拉斯加湾倾倒了4100万升石油，有关清理工作的报道集中在环保人士擦洗被石油浸泡的海豹和海雀的画面上。
But much of the actual oil removal was accomplished by bacteria that naturally feed on crude oil.
但大部分的除油工作实际上是由天然的分解石油的细菌完成的。
