Mitigation of Microplastics

The management of microplastics in terrestrial environments emerges as a critical frontier in environmental sciences, confronting the microplastic contamination and its negative ramifications on soil health, plant growth, and ecosystem services. Microplastics are globally acknowledged as a formidable environmental challenge, undermining soil structure, reducing fertility, and jeopardizing living soil organisms. This review explores the sources, environmental behavior, and transport pathways of microplastics in soil, and their impacts on soil health. It further investigates the chemical interactions and pathways of contaminant transport facilitated by microplastics, broadening the discussion to include their implications for soil and overall environmental health. Addressing remediation, current methods for microplastic removal from soils, including mechanical separation, and advanced bioremediation techniques leveraging microbial degradation and phytoaccumulation are discussed. Additionally, it highlights degradation technologies such as photocatalytic degradation, enzymatic breakdown, and microwave pyrolysis, critically assessing their effectiveness in reducing microplastic pollution and enhancing soil health and ecosystem integrity.