Plastics: Impact on the Environment, Sources, and Remedial Solutions Using Microbes.

Abstract

Plastic is one of the most widely used and essential materials worldwide, owing to its stability, durability, lightness, requiring low maintenance, transparency, and being cheap. It is the centre of attention as compared to other known materials. Equipped with a vast number of desired properties, plastic facilitates application in various industries, also used for commercial and agricultural purposes. But most plastics are not degraded easily, and they require many centuries for their complete decomposition. As a result, plastics accumulate rather than decomposing in landfills or naturally. Its disposal is causing significant harm to various ecosystems, namely terrestrial, marine, air, and water. The worldwide plastic production attained 460 million tons in the year 2022 and is expected to double by 2035 and quadruple by 2050. The present article comprehensively summarizes the microorganisms that are able to degrade a variety of generally used synthetic plastics, like polyethene, polystyrene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, polyurethane, and polyethene terephthalate. Bacterial, fungal and algal species offer efficient biodegradation pathways. Despite these developments, the rate of microbial degradation is lower, and the efficiency of microbes strongly depends on factors like the polymer type, physicochemical properties, composition of microbial community, enzyme activity, and factors like salinity, temperature, pH, etc. The development of extensible, cheaper techniques for building bioplastics and increasing the potential of microbes will prove to be helpful for the wider utilization of this technique in overcoming pollution caused by microplastics. Researchers in various fields, like synthetic chemists, process engineers, and microbiologists, should work collectively to create a more sustainable society by generating environmentally friendly polymers.