Engineers at UT Austin modified wild PET-eating bacterial enzymes to create FAST-PETase, which breaks down polyethylene terephthalate in under 24 hours instead of six weeks. Similar bioleaching strains extract rare earth metals 73 percent faster than natural microbes. Yet environmental deployment remains frozen under the 1986 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA): of more than 240 applications filed between 1987 and 2018, almost none were approved, because any intergeneric marker gene classifies the living organism as a synthetic chemical. worksinprogress.news