Efficacy of Bacterial Consortium on Microplastic Mineralization at Municipal Dumping Grounds

Microplastics (MPs) are now a major concern worldwide due to their crucial impacts on living beings, including those related to human health. Although MP occurrence and remediation are well documented for aquatic environments but there is a lack of research about the MPs degradation in municipal dumping grounds. Municipal soiled waste is a valuable, low-cost resource for biofertilizer that has resale value. By accumulating in the soil, MPs can alter the soil properties and migrate into the soil, which might result in deep soil and groundwater pollution. The combination and interactions of MPs with their adsorbed organic pollutants, heavy metals can create critical environmental pollution. The thrust of this chapter is enhanced in-situ biodegradation of microplastic through a microbial consortium in several municipal waste dumping sites. This restricts the biomagnifications of microplastic throughout the ecological food chain. While the idea of introducing a designed microbial consortium for bioaugmentation of microplastic mineralization in a municipal dumping ground is intriguing, several challenges need to be addressed, which include the vast diversity (i.e., types, chemical compositions) of microplastic in municipal dumping grounds and physicochemical factors (such as pH, temperature, moisture content, heavy metals content) interactions with other pollutants.