Pollution: Plastic bottles could be turned into vanilla ice cream!

Plastic in your vanilla ice cream anyone? It might not sound appealing, but scientists have found a way to convert plastic waste into vanilla flavouring that could be used in ice cream.

They've managed to convert plastic bottles into a vanilla flavouring - known as vanillin - using a new type of bacteria. It's the first time a valuable chemical like vanillin has been brewed from plastic waste.

At the moment lots of single-use plastics are being discarded as waste. But up-cycling plastic bottles into items that are valuable and high in demand, like vanillin, could make the recycling process more effective and help tackle the global plastic pollution problem.

Researchers had already developed a way to break down the polyethylene terephthalate (known as PET) that's used in drink bottles, into its basic units called terephthalic acid - or TA for short.

Now, scientists at the University of Edinburgh have used a type of bacteria - which are tiny living organisms - to convert TA into vanillin.

A mixture with these items was continually shaken at room temperature for a day and as a result 79% of the TA became vanillin.

They now hope to improve the process even further, so larger amounts of plastic can be converted.

Vanillin is used in food to give things a vanilla flavour as well as being used in other items like make-up and cleaning products.

Naturally vanillin comes from a plant. However, there is a huge demand for it in the world, far more than can be provided naturally.

So, vanillin is also created using different oils, chemicals and processes to keep up with the demand.

Stephen Wallace of the University of Edinburgh, who worked on this research, said: "This is the first time that bacteria have been used to make vanillin from plastic waste. This is exciting to us as it means we can also turn plastic into other useful chemicals in an environmentally friendly way."

Currently only a small amount of the plastic bottles produced around the world get recycled. And even those bottles that are recycled can only be turned into certain things. But this research opens up new ways of recycling plastic bottles.

Bottles are the second most common type of plastic pollution in the oceans, after plastic bags.