Microbial degradation of polyurethane plastics

Abstract:

Plastic pollution has become a global environmental issue, making it necessary to explore the environmental disposal technology for plastic waste. Recently, we and other researchers have individually found microorganisms or enzymes from nature that can degrade synthetic plastic. These findings indicated that the capability of these microorganisms or enzymes to degrade plastic could be used for the disposal of plastic waste. Polyurethane (PUR) was one of the most used general plastic and its plastic waste occupied 30% of the total volume of different plastic waste. This review tried to provide a comprehensive summary of the researches on microbial degradation of PUR plastic in the past 70 years since its invention, and focused on the PUR-degrading fungi, bacteria, genes or enzymes, degradation products and the corresponding biological disposal technologies. We finally proposed the key scientific challenges on the development of high efficient biological disposal for PUR waste in the perspective researches.