With every passing year, the situation surrounding microplastics can often feel more and more discouraging. These plastic particles, mostly imperceptible to the naked eye, have overrun all of Earth's major environments — in soil, in oceans, and even in the air we breathe. But not all hope is lost, because scholars around the world are coming up with ways to tackle microplastics.

Take Arya Satheesh, for example. The 18-year-old student from Letterkenny, Ireland, has made a splash in the world of sustainability with her invention, Eco Purge, which is a biodegradable plastic. Fighting plastic with plastic may seem counterintuitive at first, but Satheesh designed Eco Purge to not only break down naturally, but also release special enzymes that cause other microplastics to break down.

Based on her creation of Eco Purge, Satheesh was recently named the European winner of The Earth Prize, the world’s largest environmental competition for 13- to 19-year-olds, in May 2026.

“I wanted to create something that could help tackle that problem directly,” Satheesh said in a statement from The Earth Prize. “Eco Purge is designed to both replace plastic and help remove existing microplastics, and this is just the beginning, and I hope it can become a scalable solution that makes a real difference.”

Taking Action Against Microplastics

Upon winning the European regional competition of The Earth Prize, Satheesh was awarded $12,500 to further develop Eco Purge.

The statement from The Earth Prize describes how Satheesh got the idea for Eco Purge from an early project she worked on that entailed monitoring water quality. Noticing the abundance of microplastics, she aimed to create something that could eliminate them from environments they're continuously infiltrating.

Thus, Eco Purge was born; this invention is a plant-based plastic capable of carrying enzymes that are released as the plastic degrades on its own. These enzymes can then trigger other microplastics to degrade in environments like soil, fresh water, and salt water.

Satheesh has collaborated with researchers in Ireland to bring her prototype of Eco Purge to fruition. The $12,500 from The Earth Prize will also help Satheesh work toward plans to incorporate Eco Purge into products like packaging and compost bags.

Read More: A Simple Two-Step Process Can Remove Microplastics from Drinking Water

Enzyme Solutions

Other recent research projects have presented solutions with a concept similar to Eco Purge — that is, using enzymes to help microplastics break down.

In an April 2026 study published in ACS Applied Polymer Materials, researchers created a “living plastic” embedded with spores from Bacillus subtilis bacteria. The bacteria were programmed to secrete two enzymes that work together to degrade plastics. The researchers describe that with these microbes, plastics could “come alive” and self-destruct on command.

In another example, researchers from Cornell University engineered an enzyme that can break down polyethylene terephthalate (PET) — a common plastic used in packaging and textiles — in conditions found in sewage sludge. The enzyme, described in a June 2023 study published in ACS ES&T Water, could potentially be used to reduce microplastics in treated wastewater.

The Prevalence of Microplastics

In the U.S., studies have found microplastic particles in 8 gallons of Great Lakes tributary water on average; 1,285 particles per square foot of river sediment, and 112,000 particles per square mile of Great Lakes water, according to the United States Geological Survey.

Microplastics can come from a variety of forms: microbeads, films, foams, fragments, and fibers. In samples taken from rivers flowing into the Great Lakes, researchers from the USGS and the State University of New York at Fredonia detected all of these different microplastic forms. Fibers (from items like synthetic clothes, diapers, wipes, and nets) composed an average of 71 percent of the total number of microplastic particles found in the river samples.

These studies reveal just how common microplastics are today. However, projects like Eco Purge give hope that science can find innovative solutions to get rid of these persistent pollutants.

Read More: How Reliable Is the Science on Microplastics in the Human Body? Some Experts Urge Caution

Article Sources

Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:

• This article references information from The Earth Prize
• This article references information from a study published in ACS Applied Polymer Materials:Degradable Living Plastics Programmed by Engineered Microbial Consortia
• This article references information from a study published in ACS ES&T Water: PETase Engineering for Enhanced Degradation of Microplastic Fibers in Simulated Wastewater Sludge Processing Conditions
• This article references information from a study published by the USGS: Microplastics in our Nation's waterways