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Green Solutions: Bioremediation Strategies Against Microplastic Pollution-A Comprehensive Review
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Microplastics, tiny plastic particles now found in our soil, water, and air, are building up in ecosystems and food chains, which matters for human health since we're likely ingesting them through food and water too. This review pulls together existing research on using living organisms like bacteria and enzymes (some genetically enhanced) to break down these plastics, offering a promising, nature-based cleanup approach rather than proposing new experiments of its own. The takeaway: while scientists are making real progress on biological solutions, more research is needed to scale these methods up for widespread real-world use.
Microplastics (MPs) have emerged as a pervasive and ubiquitous pollutant, posing a critical global challenge to environmental sustainability. Its presence across terrestrial, aquatic and atmospheric environment highlights the complexity and scale of plastic pollution. This review provides a critical overview of the sources and the environmental pathways of MPs, with special emphasis on their classification, environmental fate and ecotoxicological impacts. Despite their diminutive size, MPs have an undue impact as they bioaccumulate in organisms and interact with abiotic components, leading to disruption of nutrient cycling, soil functionality and water recycling. The progressive accumulation of MPs has effectively transformed terrestrial and marine ecosystems into plastic sedimentation basins, necessitating an urgent reevaluation of mitigation strategies. This review critically discusses biologically driven remediation approaches, highlighting the role of biological organisms in degradation of MPs. Advances in biologically driven and genetically enhanced degradation pathways are significantly improving microplastic removal efficiency, thereby enabling scalable, nature-based strategies for long-term ecological restoration and resilience. Recent field-based experimental studies validate the potential scalability of biological degradation routes. Progress in the field of biology and genetic engineering have significantly enhanced the efficiency of microbial and enzymatic degradation, offering promising avenues for sustainable interventions. A bibliometric analysis of MPs remediation field is also provided to highlight new research directions, global collaboration networks, and thematic evolution within the MPs remediation domain. Unlike existing microplastic bioremediation reviews, this study uniquely integrates source pathway fate analysis with biologically and genetically enhanced degradation mechanisms alongside bibliometric mapping to provide a holistic, scalability-focused framework for sustainable ecological restoration. Collectively, this review integrates current scientific advances and proposes future directions for research on ecological restoration through the development of novel, nature inspired and sustainable bioremediation strategies.
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Millions of tons of plastic waste break down into tiny microplastics that now show up in our air, water, and soil, raising concerns for both ecosystems and human health. This review summarizes existing research on using bacteria and enzymes to break down these plastics, and highlights promising techniques like genetic engineering to make cleanup more effective. The findings point toward future solutions, though more research is still needed before these methods are widely usable.
Microbial Bioremediation of Microplastic Pollution for a Sustainable Ecosystem and Greener Future: A Review
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Microplastics—tiny plastic particles now found in our water, soil, and air—are hard to clean up with traditional methods and may pose risks to our health. This review rounds up the latest science on using bacteria, fungi, and their enzymes to break down these stubborn plastics, highlighting promising lab tools (like gene-editing and specially designed enzymes) that could make cleanup more effective. While these microbial solutions aren't yet ready for widespread real-world use, they represent a hopeful, more sustainable path toward reducing microplastic pollution in the future.
Microbial Bioremediation of Microplastics
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Tiny plastic bits called microplastics are now everywhere in our environment—and even in our bodies—raising concerns about long-term health effects. This review paper rounds up what scientists currently know about using bacteria and other microbes to break down these plastic particles, a promising cleanup strategy, while also pointing out the challenges researchers still need to solve before it works at scale. The takeaway: nature may offer tools to help tackle plastic pollution, but we're not there yet, so reducing microplastic use in the first place still matters for protecting our health.
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Eco-Solutions to Microplastic Pollution: Advances in Bioremediation Technologies
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