Chemo-bio catalytic strategy for upcycling carbonaceous waste to value-added products

The conversion of carbonaceous waste into value-added chemicals represents a sustainable waste management paradigm with the potential to alleviate mounting global carbon emission pressures and environmental crises. The inherent chemical inertness of carbonaceous wastes, such as CO₂ and plastics, necessitates harsh recycling conditions, making it challenging to achieve both high conversion and high selectivity, which severely limits the process efficiency. Conversely, enzyme-driven biotransformations operate under ambient conditions with exceptional selectivity, but are hindered by narrow substrate scope and slow kinetics. By synergistically integrating the high efficiency of chemical catalysis with the precision of biosynthetic pathways, chemo-bio catalytic integrated strategies offer a promising alternative. These approaches enable continuous energy input for enzymatic upgrading of carbon waste through chemical energy-transduction mechanisms, while converting complex carbonaceous materials into small molecule intermediates that are readily assimilated by microbes, thus overcoming limitations in both substrate scope and energy supply. This perspective systematically summarizes recent advances and evolving trends in chemo-bio integrated strategies for the valorization of carbonaceous waste. We provide a comprehensive analysis from the perspectives of spatially coupled and spatially decoupled systems, and further examine persistent challenges related to efficiency enhancement, system robustness, energy utilization, and scalable integration.