Humans have always created waste over a years. Solid waste, garbage, trash has been dropped into streets, sewage, landfills, waterways all over. Advances have been made globally to confront complex problems of waste generation, collection, and disposal. Currently, about 2.01 billion metric tons of municipal solid wastes are produced annually worldwide. The world bank estimates, overall waste generation will increase to around 3.40 billion metric tons by 2025. Out of total municipal waste collected on average, 94% is dumped on land and 5% is composted.

Nowadays, Plastics have become a worldwide recognized problem. These synthetic durable, non-reactive, cheap, conventional plastics play a vital role in our day-to-day life. They have taken constant place in our lives, by providing series of incredible benefits, besides they bring huge remarkable impact on soil, on our environment and health, Humans have generated around 380 million tons plastics every year, from which only 9% has been recycled and remaining ends up in landfill sites or oceans and recycled plastics causes more problems to the environment than original plastics due to the mixing of additives, colors, stabilizers, etc. Hence, there is an urgent need of reducing mankind’s dependencies on these nonrenewable resources. To overcome these crises, Biodegradable plastics take the best option to protect the environment against petroleum-based plastics.

There are many biodegradable plastics with different degrees of biodegradability such as starch-based, soy-based, cellulose-based, lignin-based, but among them, Polyhydroxybutyrate( PHBs), bacterial based bioplastics are the best and 100% biodegradable ones. PHB is a biologically produced biodegradable substance synthesized as inclusion bodies in numerous bacteria like Bacillus, Azotobacter chroococcum, Ralstonia eutrophus, Bacillus megaterium etc. PHBs are the energy reserve in the form of water-insoluble dense granules present in the cytoplasm of bacteria, they use them to store energy when they lack enough nutrients to reproduce. When microbes are under stress conditions or imbalanced condition of nutrients or in presence of excess carbon sources, they result in the production of granules inside their cells, resembling a very good property to those of synthetic plastics besides fully biodegradable. On degradation, they produce carbon dioxide, methane, mineral salts, water, and biomass to the environment and this PHB is well-posed for commercial adoption use due to better biodegradable properties in many types of environment.

Through these kinds of an alternative approach for the production of renewable, biodegradable plastics, could make a huge difference in the treatment of waste management, PHB is widely used for various biomedical applications, food packaging, plant pots, packing of beauty products, pharmaceutical industries, etc. Further chemical modifications with PHB could result in properties of the polymer to great extent. Thus by increasing the production of PHB, could bring a positive environmental effect. In next coming years, statistics of plastic waste usage could drastically reduce to make a better, toxic-free, green environment.