Biodegradation of Polythene and Plastic by the Help of Microbial Tools: A Recent Approach

Abstract

Microorganism play a significant role in biological decomposition of materials including synthetic polymers in natural environments, this is called biodegradation. In this review microbial biodegradation of polythene and plastics are discussed. Here we aim to isolate and identify microorganism associated with various polyethylene and plastic degradation in the soil. Polythene and plastic are the two polymers with wide ranging applications. They are recalcitrant and hence remain inert to degradation and deterioration leading to their accumulation in the environment, and therefore creating serious environmental problems. In this context, an attempt was made to study the biodegradation of polythene and plastic strips inside the laboratory (under controlled condition) and outside the laboratory (under natural condition) with the help of microbial tools. In this review, biodegradation of these two polymers under in vitro conditions is reported. An attempt has been made to cover the mechanism of biodegradation, the various bacterial and fungal organisms that have been reported for the same, method adopted for the studies and different characterization techniques followed to measure the extent of degradation.

Biodegradation of thermally treated low density polyethylene by fungus Rhizopus oryzae NS 5

“…Aggregation rate of plastic waste in the environment is 25 million tons/year (Orhan and Buyukgungor 2000;Nayak and Tiwari 2011;Baruah 2011;Kaseem et al 2012) and consequently causes a serious environmental peril (Sivan et al 2006; Thompson et al 2004). Currently used polyethylene thin plastic films and sheets used in product packaging are Polyolefin-derived plastics.…”

Recycling High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) into construction materials as a key step in plastic waste reduction: case of Kigali City

“…Production of HDPE and other plastics is steadily increasing year by year because of their demand in daily life activities [3]. In general, the increase in worldwide consumption rate for plastics; the synthetic long chains of polymers [4]; is about 12% per year while plastic production is 0.15 billion tons per year on a global scale [5,6,7,8]. These polymers generally contain carbon and hydrogen with, sometimes, other elements such as oxygen, nitrogen, chloride or fluoride [8,9].…”

“…These polymers generally contain carbon and hydrogen with, sometimes, other elements such as oxygen, nitrogen, chloride or fluoride [8,9]. On the other hand, worldwide plastic wastes accumulation in the environment is 25 million tons per year [5,7]. Despite the commonly used plastic wastes management practices which include landfilling or incineration, these have adverse effects on environment with production of microplastics and/or toxic gases.…”

Possible Plastic Degradation by PSB (Phosphate Solubilizing Bacteria): Answer With Noticed Dissimilarities in Physical Texture During the Course of Three Months Incubation Inside a Circlet Soil

“…Several reviews had been written on biodegradation of the plastic (Baruah, 2011;Shah et al, 2008;Gautam et al, 2007;Zheng et al, 2005) but few only deals with polythene. Yet comprehensive reports on the polythene biodegradation and/or degradation be lacking to say how to encounter the polythene pollution in future (Nayak and Tiwari, 2011;Sangale et al, 2012).…”