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Microbial Degradation of Plastics
Summary
This review covers microbial species capable of degrading synthetic plastics, examining the enzymes and metabolic pathways involved and the environmental conditions that influence breakdown rates. While microbial degradation offers a promising long-term remediation strategy, the review concludes that current rates are far too slow to address the scale of plastic accumulation in the environment.
For several decades, plastics are extensively used in different products in various industries such as construction, health, agriculture and manufacturing of several consumer goods include defense materials, unbreakable plastic bottles, replacement for animal leathers and sanitary wares etc., Plastics are widely used in food and pharmaceutical industry for efficient packing of food items, chemicals and cosmetics. As plastics are durable, light weight, nonconducting and inexpensive, it is massively produced each year to meet the global demand. Despite its advantages in daily life, excessive usage, inadequate care on plastics disposal and accumulation of plastics in abundance in the environment lead to major threat for ecosystem and human health. The extensive degradation time of plastics (nearly 1000 years), and the emission of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) from the plastics burning to the environment are the major reasons for global warming. Thus, it is necessary to imply the proper disposal method of plastics. Recently, great attention has been paid to the research on microbial degradation of plastics that provide method to degrade the plastic wastes using biological treatments for safe disposal of plastics and less threat to ecosystem. In this chapter, the history and types of plastics and different degradation methods for disposal of plastic wastes are comprehensively explained. Types of widely used commodity plastics such as polyethylene terephthalate, low-and high-density polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, and polyvinyl chloride, its benefits, and applications in variety of industries are explained in detail. The adverse effects of plastic waste accumulation and its improper disposal methods, challenges in the present methods of plastic disposal and its environmental hazards are meticulously explained. The benefits of biodegradation methods of plastics, the interaction between microorganisms and plastics for depolymerization, list of microbial species used to breakdown the plastics, its challenges and future directions are explained in detail. Taken together another threat to marine ecosystem due to plastic wastes are microplastics which is result of photodegradation of large plastic waste. The pollution due to microplastics and adverse effects of toxic particles of microplastics consumption to humans and aquatic species are explained. To monitor and understand the accumulation and detrimental impacts of microplastics to the environment, it is urgent to study the existing and innovative identification methods of microplastics. Traditional methods of microplastic identification, its advantages and limitations are explained. Also, the latest technologies including artificial intelligence approach for rapid and accurate identification microplastics are explained.