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Recent Trends to Address Plastic Waste at the Global Level

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Impact of Plastic Waste on the Marine Biota

Abstract

Plastic waste has become a major problem in the world because there are no effective strategies for its management and it ends up accumulating in the environment. In literature, attempts have been made to introduce human awareness of the use, reduction and reuse of plastic products, accompanied by traditional waste management techniques, but the problem of pollution from synthetic plastics continues to increase. Throughout the world, the problem of plastic residues has been handled by traditional techniques such as incineration, landfill and recycling. Traditional techniques have their limitations, such as the production of greenhouse gases that increase climate change which leads to affecting the living organism in both terrestrial and marine environment. Therefore, researchers are now focusing on the development of biological technologies such as composting, phytoremediation and biodegradation using microorganisms and their enzymes. These techniques are important because they mitigate the environmental pollutants although they require a lot of time to obtain results and highly qualified personnel. Attempts have also been made to replace traditional plastic with renewable and recyclable sources, such as bioplastics. Some bacteria, algae, fungi and actinomycetes have the potential to degrade these polymers because their metabolism allows them to use them as a nutrient and carbon resource. There are also genetically modified microorganisms that acquire the ability to degrade this material, as well as other recent techniques such as nanoremediation that are very promising. In the present chapter, an attempt was made under the following lines: (i) to overview the techniques used to mitigate the plastic waste, (ii) to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each mitigation method and (iii) to discuss the biodegradation of synthetic plastics by microorganisms as an environmentally friendly alternative for the appropriate elimination of plastic waste as well as the implementation of microbial consortia to increase the biodegradation performance at commercial level.

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Acknowledgement

We thank the Universidad Santiago de Cali and our editor Dr. Mohd. Shahnawaz for their support and the opportunity to make this publication possible. We also thank all our family and friends for their collaboration and encouragement.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Santiago de Cali, Department of Microbiology, Cali, Colombia

    Lida Vivian Carvajal Rodríguez & Cesar David Benavides Fernández

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  1. Lida Vivian Carvajal Rodríguez
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  2. Cesar David Benavides Fernández
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Correspondence to Lida Vivian Carvajal Rodríguez .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Biofuels Institute, School of Environment and Safety Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China

    Mohd. Shahnawaz

  2. Cyfoeth Naturiol Cymru, Natural Resource Wales, Swansea, UK

    Manisha K. Sangale

  3. Biofuels Institute, School of Environment and Safety Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China

    Zhu Daochen

  4. Department of Botany, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, India

    Avinash B. Ade

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Carvajal Rodríguez, L.V., Benavides Fernández, C.D. (2022). Recent Trends to Address Plastic Waste at the Global Level. In: Shahnawaz, M., Sangale, M.K., Daochen, Z., Ade, A.B. (eds) Impact of Plastic Waste on the Marine Biota. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5403-9_5

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