ABSTRACT
Plastic is used in large number worldwide and its use has become part of our daily life for different purposes. Degradation of plastic wastes is serious problem which has created adverse effects on humans, animals, plants and environment. There are many processes available for the degradation of plastics, but the most eco-friendly and cheap method is by microbial degradation as the other process has hazardous effect on environment and also be costly. This study deals with the isolation, characterization and identification of plastic degrading bacteria and also study of the degradation of plastic waste by using individual bacterial isolates and also the consortium of bacterial isolates. Total 20 isolates were obtained from the Fursungi area, Pune, India. Four of the bacterial isolates were selected based on plastic degrading ability on different media. The isolates were identified as Bacillus cereus, Serratia marcescens, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Streptomyces sp. based on morphological, physiological and biochemical characteristics. Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Serratia marcescens showed 15.78% degradation respectively, Streptomyces sp. showed 15.38% and Bacillus cereus showed 7.1% for the degradation period of 20 days. Consortium of the bacteria showed 43.75% of plastic degradation. From this it can be concluded, that the bacteria can be used for the plastic waste degradation. The use of bacteria for plastic waste degradation will be very eco-friendly and it will be a sustainable approach for the plastic waste degradation.
Keywords: Degradation, microbes, eco-friendly, sustainable, waste
