Polyethylene Case Study

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Isolation and Characterization of Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) Degrading Soil Microbe from Polythene Dump Site Submitted by: Ma. Vanessa A. Velasco Daisy Ann L. Olpindo Submitted to: Ms. LuzvimindaDinglasan INTRODUCTION Background of the study Polyethylene consists of long chains of repeating units of smaller molecules which are non-biodegradable (Burd, 2008). It is thermoplastic made up from fossil fuel, which is widely used in packaging materials (Ramesh, Pamila, 2011). Every year, the rate of polyethylene is increasing by 12% and nearly 140 million tons of synthetic polymers are made (Shimao, 2001). With the increasing amount of using polyethylene, their disposal gives a very serious problem environmentally. Their degradation will reach more than thousands of years to decompose efficiently (Nanda, Sahu, 2010). Polyethylene remains in nature and end up in landfills because of their durability and light weight. However, some microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi have the ability to decompose plastic both natural and synthetic plastics (Ramesh, Pamila, 2011). In the recent years, there are many people concern over the environmental issues especially in disposal of plastics. The plastic sheets or bags should not go into earth because water, air and soil will be affected. These plastics cause infertility of soil, danger to animal life and reduction of underground source. These plastics are highly visible in the environment and rapidly…show more content…
Rhizobium melilotihelped to degradePE. Recent study, Uyigue et al., (2012) proved that ordinary salt was not effective in degradation of polypropylene. The degradation of polypropylene in sea water depends on the physical, chemical, biological of sea water, the thickness of polypropylene and its starch

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