Impact of Biodegradable Plastics: Environmental Hazards
Abstract
Plastics are ubiquitous in worldwide. They are used almost in every fields of technology due to their longer durability, high tensile strength, elasticity and non-degradable nature. Today’s world is known as “the plastic age”. Besides improving our lives, they are more harmful for us and for environment. Accumulation of large amounts of plastics in soil and water has shown harmful effects on agricultural plants by inhibiting plant growth and ingestion of micro plastics and Nano plastics through food chain causes dreadful diseases to humans and animals. Prevalence of climate change problem is also due to the accumulation of persistent plastics in environment. One solution for alleviating non-biodegradable plastics is using biodegradable plastics made of biodegradable biopolymers by which extracellular enzymes of microorganisms can utilize them as metabolic products and sole source of carbon and oxygen for the growth of microorganisms. This can help reduce the problems of climate change, micro plastic accumulation and littering. However, biodegradable plastics still lacks complete degradation by microorganisms or arthropods. In depth study is required to unwind complete biodegradation process by some enzymes isolated from plants, bacteria and fungi. This review has also highlighted few putative genes involved in the biodegradation process for further studies. This review highlighted some of the recent assays used to test the biodegradability of plastics and bio-based plastics, their mechanism and applications. Few updates regarding alternatives of plastic are development of bio plastic mulch films for better crop plant yield. Future prospects have highlighted knowledge gaps which are required to study for the development of more alternatives of plastics.
