Response of indigenously developed bacterial consortia in progressive degradation of polyvinyl chloride

Abstract

Thermoplastic-based materials are recalcitrant in nature, which extensive use affect environmental health. Here, we attempt to compare the response of indigenously produced bacterial consortium-I and consortium-II in degrading polyvinyl chloride (PVC). These consortia were developed by using different combination of bacterial strains of Pseudomonas otitidis, Bacillus cereus, and Acanthopleurobacter pedis from waste disposal sites of Northern India after their identification via 16S rDNA sequencing. The progressive degradation of PVC by consortia was examined via scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, UV-vis, FT-IR spectra, gel permeation chromatography, and differential scanning calorimetry analysis at different incubations and time intervals. The consortium-II was superior over consortium-I in degrading the PVC. Further, the carbon source utilization analysis revealed that the extensive use of consortia has not any effect on functional diversity of native soil microbes.

Microbial Degradation and Valorization of Plastic Wastes

“…Several fungal isolates ( Table 5) from various environmental samples, such as atmosphere (Webb et al, 2000), plasticized PVC sheets buried in the grassland soil (Sabev et al, 2006;Ali et al, 2014), and plastic wastes disposal sites (Khatoon et al, 2019), also exhibited the ability to deteriorate the plasticized PVC. In addition, a number of bacterial strains (Table 5), isolated from garden soil, landfill leachate, waste disposal sites, and marine environments, have also been reported to be able to degrade the plasticized PVC (Nakamiya et al, 2005;Latorre et al, 2012;Anwar et al, 2016;Kumari et al, 2019;Giacomucci et al, 2019). However, these abovementioned plasticized PVCdegrading microorganisms just metabolized a component of the plasticizer [such as bis (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, DEHP] rather than the backbone of PVC.…”

Biological Degradation of Polymers in the Environment

“…Modifying the PVC film composition with adjuvants such as cellulose and starch provided a substrate that fungi could also degrade [65]. Several investigations of soil bacteria for the ability to degrade PVC from enrichment cultures were conducted on different locations [66].…”

Comparative in situ biodegradation studies of polyhydroxybutyrate film composites

“…Analyses of these samples were carried out to understand the regular pattern of changes in PHB film structure after treatments for longer duration. Henceforth, the recovered products were surface sterilized with 70% ethanol for 10 min and dried in a desiccator for 24 h under vacuum (Anwar et al 2016).…”

“…This preliminary result affirmed that the consortium has utilized PHB powder as sole carbon source for their survival, as the growth medium was not containing any other carbon source. It has been shown and considered that the relative higher growth of bacterial consortium is achieved only when polymer is utilized as sole source of carbon and energy (Raghuwanshi et al 2015;Anwar et al 2016).…”