Microplastics in solid waste disposal sites of central India: Abundance and implications

Sustainable cities are the urban systems designed to minimize adverse environmental impacts through efficient resource management, while simultaneously enhancing adaptive capacity and resilience to future environmental stressors. However, rapidly increasing population, urbanization, and consumerism have led to increased generation of solid waste globally, posing significant environmental challenge. Inappropriate management of waste has resulted in air, water, and soil pollution, besides the accumulation of numerous emerging contaminants. Microplastics are one such emerging contaminant, which have recently been traced in waste disposal sites of multiple cities. In the present study, solid waste disposal sites of Bhopal and Indore cities in Central India were investigated for quantifying the abundance of microplastics. Wet peroxide oxidation and density separation processes were used to extract microplastics. A total of 13.5 items/L and 7 items/L of microplastics were found in the leachate collected from Bhopal and Indore, respectively. Polyacrylic fibres, polyamide, polyethylene, polypropylene, and cellulose-acetate were major chemical compositions of the obtained items. Occurrence of these contaminants in leachate may be seen as a potential threat to the soil and groundwater. Additionally, comparison of these findings with reported literature revealed that the abundance of microplastics in studied area was higher than Nordic countries. However, it was lesser than other cities of India owing to source segregation practices adopted in Central Indian region. In line of these findings, for safeguarding the environment and achieving sustainable development goals of ‘sustainable cities and communities and ‘responsible consumption and production’; source segregation and judicious waste management practices need to be adopted.