MICROBES IN PLASTIC WASTE TREATMENT

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.

3 thoughts on “MICROBES IN PLASTIC WASTE TREATMENT

  1. Can we consider jumping genes is an alternative to CRisprcas9 and how jumping gene could be safer alternative??

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    1. Yes. We can consider jumping genes as seamless & safe alternative to CRISPRcas9 because, jumping genes could effectively be programmed with a guide& it has all the necessary chemical properties to directly insert or integrate precisely into users defined sites in genome& it can effectively slide into DNA without any breaks and this technique works for 40-60%
      Whereas CRISPR technique: Though it can insert DNA into precise site in the genome, this process is not that effective, sometimes repairs are incomplete or incorrect, again having a negative side effect and this technique works only for 20% of time, they don’t work at all for many types of cells.

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