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Polythene and Environment

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 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES Volume 5, No 6, 2015

© Copyright by the authors - Licensee IPA- Under Creative Commons license 3.0

Research article ISSN 0976 – 4402

Polythene and environment

Alka Grover1, Akanksha Gupta1, Shivani Chandra1, Abha Kumari1 and SM Paul Khurana2
1- Amity Institute of Biotechnology, Amity University, Sector 125, Noida 201301 (U.P),
India
2- Amity Institute of Biotechnology, Amity University, Manesar, Gurgaon, Haryana, India
agrover@amity.edu
doi: 10.6088/ijes.2014050100103

ABSTRACT

Use of polythene is increasing day by day and now it can be seen that polythene is being used
in almost every activity of life. It has been estimated that India's polythene demand is
expected to increase by 129 % by 2023. With the increased use of polythene, the pollution
level caused by it will also be increased, affecting almost every kind of environment
including terrestrial as well as aquatic biome. There are various methods for lowering down
the polythene littering; having their own associated pros and cons. Among all other methods
biological degradation appears to be the most promising method. Microbes utilize the
polythene as source of carbon and use their enzymatic machinery to solubilize it. In this study
an array of microbes have been studied for their biodegradation capacity of polythene.

Keywords: Plastic, Polythene, Biodegradation, Enzyme, Microrganism.

1. Introduction

Polythene or polyethylene is a polymer of ethylene gas (CH2=CH2) which is commonly used

in our day to day life like grocery bags, shampoo bottles, bullet proof vests etc. Several kinds
of polythenes are known with most having the chemical formula (C2H4)nH2 . There are
various categories of polyethylene like low density polyethylene (LDPE), medium density
polythene (MDPE), high density polyethylene (HDPE) and very low density polyethylene
(VLDPE) (Rivard et al., 1995). Among these LDPE is commonly used for making grocery
bags, food wrapping material, power cable sheathing and laboratory containers as it is
excellently resistant to dilute and concentrated acids, ketones and vegetable oils. Versatile
nature of LPDE makes it major cause of pollution (Usha et al., 2011). It has been shown in
figure 1 that India has a large share of 4% of total plastic consumed worldwide and it has
been estimated that comprehensive polyethylene demand in India is expected to mount 8.2
million tons by 2023, up from 3.6 million tons in 2013 that would be largest in Asia
(www.buisness -standard.com). According to Greenpeace international report (2014)
approximate annual production of plastic in world is around 100 million tonnes . This amount
is a matter of great concern considering environmental safety.

2. Effect of polythene on different kinds of environments

The environment has been classified mainly in to five categories i.e. aquatic, deserts, forests,
grasslands and tundra. It is extremely tragic news that polythene is showing it deleterious
effects on all major types of biomes. Total plastic waste that is polluting marine as well as
terrestrial environment is around 25 million tons, out of which 64% are synthetic plastics
(Yang et al., 2011).

Received on April 2015 Published on May 2015 1091

 Polythene and environment

Figure 1: Per Capita plastic consumption worldwide in year 2014.

2.1 Terrestrial ecosystem

Polythene has become a serious threat for all kinds of terrestrial ecosystems.

2.2 Urban and rural areas

In urban areas, polythene is major threat to both environment and public hygiene. Polythene
bags get accumulated at dumping yards, in gutters, drains, agricultural fields and even at
roadsides that results ultimately in a huge stack of refuse. This stockpile becomes the
breeding ground of dangerous insects like mosquitoes and flies which are cause of various
diseases and in rainy season the condition gets worsened.

800
690
700

600

500
429 426 408
400

300

200

100

0
DELHI CHENNAI KOLKATA MUMBAI

PLASTIC WASTE GENERATED BY METRO IN TONS PER DAY IN 2013

Figure 2: Plastic waste generated in metro cities of India in 2013.

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 Polythene and environment

PLASTIC WASTE GENERATED IN NEW

DELHI AIRPORT

36%
DOMESTIC
INTERNATIONAL
64%

Figure 3: Percentage share of plastic waste at domestic as well as international airports of

New Delhi in 2014.

PLASTIC WASTE GENERATED IN NEW

DELHI RAILWAY STATION

5000
Plastic waste (Kg)

4000
3000
2000
1000
0
H. OLD DELHI NEW DELHI
NIZAMUDDIN
Railway station in New Delhi

Figure 4: Chart showing plastic waste generated at different railway stations of Delhi in 2014.

Among all the metro cities of India Delhi is on top position for generating plastic waste
(Figure 2). Plastic waste generated at different railway stations and airports of Delhi has been
shown through pie cart (Figure 3 and 4). There are various reported cases of death of cows in
rural areas due to consumption of a polythene bag. The bag remained undigested in its gut,
thereby, leading to blockage of digestive tract (Pruter, 1987).

Almost all types of terrestrial ecosystems are affected by polythene pollution like deserts
(Zylstra, 2013), forest, grasslands (Gregory, 2009) and polar regions (Nuttall 2000: Lytle
2015) . In United Arab Emirates camel and endangered desert animals are reported dead by
eating polythene bags along with the food (Terry 2013). There had been a case where a
platypus suffered deep wounds in body when a plastic bag twisted around its body
(McNamee 2009). Even delicate flora and fauna of tundra is not safe from polythene
pollution due to increased human iinterference (Feng Sheng Hu, 2014).

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 Polythene and environment

2.3 Aquatic environment

Plastics not only harm terrestrial flora and fauna, it has been known to have a disastrous
effect on aquatic environment as well (Browne et al., 2011). Not only oceans are
contaminated but seabed near the coastal areas is also found to be rich in plastic bag
contamination. The threat to marine environment is caused by marine debris of plastics
(Webb et al., 2013). Due to debris, there has been a decrease in marine fauna population,
either they entangled through their body or they were ingested by fishes and birds mistaking
debris to be prey (Derraik, 2002).

According to Greenpeace report (2006) around 80% of marine debris is from land and
remaining 20% is from other water bodies. Major sources for marine debris are tourist
activities at sea beaches, debris from sewer, fishing material (Corcoran et al., 2009) and
wastes from ship and boats (Denuncio et al., 2011). However, those plastics which are
degraded either mechanically or chemically are ultimately reduced to tiny pieces of the size
of grain. These tiny particles are then ingested by various small creatures and may
concentrate persistent organic pollutants (POPs) present in seas. Marine debris has affected
267 species globally out of which, 86% includes sea turtle, 44% seabird species and 43%
marine mammal species (Browne et al.,. 2011). As per a study conducted in USA, out of
1033 birds collected off the coast, 55% of them had plastic in their gut. This is due to their
habit of selecting their prey on the basis of colour, hence mistaking polythene for potential
prey items (Browne et al., 2011). These ingested plastics block gastric enzyme secretion and
diminish feeding stimulus resulting into reduced food uptake, injury to internal organs
(Teuten et al., 2009) and ultimately reproductive failure (David et al.,. 2009).

2.4 Polythene disposal methods

There is an urgent need to find out the proper method for polythene disposal. Currently four
considerable options are available viz. thermal treatment, land filling, recycling and
biodegradation. All methods have their inherent limitations.

2.5 Thermal treatment

Thermal decomposition of polyethylene results in evolution of harmful gases during fires or

waste burning like carbon monoxide, chlorine, furans, dioxins, CCl4, etc resulting into
breaathing problems. Therefore it is mainly done through incineration and pyrolysis (Nisar et
al., 2011).The final products of incineration are ash and exhaust gases. It has been estimated
that the carbon footprint of LDPE or polyethylene is about 6 kg CO2 per kg of plastic (Juerg
2015). These exhaust gases contain highly toxic products: PAHs , dioxins and furans which
cause air pollution. Many investigators have studied the pyrolysis of polyethylene
(Westerhout et al., 1997 : Bockhorn et al., 1999). Plasma Pyrolysis is an effective method to
destroy polythenes in an eco-friendly manner. This method uses a plasma torch in oxygen
deprived environment. This method takes place at very high temperature (usually between
325°C - 850°C). The temperature variations during pyrolysis cause different gases
production. Thus, at low temperature, usually the gases produced are found to be carbon
dioxide, ethylene, propylene, carbon monoxide, butadiene and methane, whereas, at high
temperature along with carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and ethylene, some additional gases
produced are benzene, methane and hydrogen (Ademiluyi and Adebayo, 2007).

3. Landfilling

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 Polythene and environment

Landfilling has its own associated limitations as land remains unavailable for a very long
time. Otherwise the land may be utilised for agriculture and other related activities (Webb et
al., 2013). Degradation rate of polythene is very slow in landfills due to anaerobic
environment. Polythene debris remain for very long time in landfill and it has been published
in a report that it will take around 500 year to breakdown in landfills (Lapidos, 2007) and
leaving the land barren. Secondary environmental pollution is a major problem of landfills.
Pollutants are released in the form of leachate as well as gases viz. toluene , benzene , xylene
ethyl and trimethyl benzene. In addition to these chemicals other estrogenic compounds
include Bisphenol A (BPA), pthalate and PBB (Polybrominated biphenyls) (Xu et al., 2011)
These compounds are very much harmful for human health causing diseases related to
reproductive system of mammals and different types of cancer like prostate, ovarian and
breast cancer (Yang et al., 2011).

4. Recycling

Recycling of plastics involve many processes including mechanical, chemical and thermal
depolymerisation (Hopewell et al., 2009). Recycling of plastics is of four types primary,
secondary, tertiary and quaternary. Primary and secondary recycling is referred as mechanical
recycling. In tertiary recycling polymer is de-polymerized to its chemical constituents
(Fisher, 2003). Energy is recovered from waste plastics under quaternary recycling. Bins and
crates are manufactured from recycled HDPE milk bottles and PET fibre is manufactured
from recovered PET packaging in UK (Hopewell et al., 2009). LPDE can be recycled to form
products like plastic lumber, trash bags, etc. Chemical recycling recovers the petrochemical
constituents of the polymer, which can then be used to re-manufacture plastic or to make
other synthetic chemicals. But recycling is not cost effective (Patel et al., 2000). It has been
concluded by several researchers that during recycling more toxic and larger amounts of
hazardous volatile organic compounds are emitted from melted virgin and waste plastic
pellets than producing virgin plastics (Yamashita et al., 2009: He et al., 2015).

Sometimes it has been observed that recycling is more effective for HDPE as compared to
LDPE (Hopewell et al., 2009). Only 1% of total plastic waste generated is recycled as it is a
costly process and rest is dumped in dumping grounds (Central Pollution Control Board
2013). But recycled plastics have proved to be more hazardous than virgin plastic as during
recycling it is mixed with a number of harmful colours, additives, stabilizers etc. Also
plastics cannot be recycled more than 3 times as each recycling results in decrease in strength
of plastics. At dumping grounds, it takes approximately 300 years for a plastic to naturally
degrade in environment (Central Pollution Control Board 2013). In addition to this, plastics
degraded by photo degradation degrades into very small toxic parts which ultimately
contaminate soil, water bodies and hence animals consuming them (Corcoran et al., 2009).
Non-recyclable plastic wastes (eg, thermostat plastic, multilayer plastics etc) generates
disposal problems (Lee et al., 1991).

4.1 Biodegradation of Polythenes

Previously, people used to search for ways to protect environment from plastic litter, but now
the focus has shifted to biodegrade the plastic with the help of various microorganisms and
recover value from polythene (David et al., 2009: Sharma et al.,2013: Singh 2005). In
biodegradation, strong carbon bonds are broken down through microbial actions that reduces
the strength of polythene (as molecular weight decreases) and hence polythene gets degraded

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 Polythene and environment

(Pruter 1987). Polyethylene can be degraded through two ways aerobic as well as anaerobic.
In aerobic degradation oxygen acts as an electron acceptor and final products are carbon
dioxide and water (Seymour 1989). Anaerobic biodegradation occurs in absence of oxygen
and therefore microorganisms use nitrate, sulphate and iron as electron acceptor (Datta et al.,
1998). There are several reported examples of plastic degrading bacteria and fungi (table1).

Table1: Examples of polythene degrading microbes

Abrusci et al. (2011), Suresh et al. (2011),
Bacillus cereus
Aswale (2010)
Priyanka and Archana (2011), Abrusci et al.
Bacillus subtilis
Bacillus (2011), Nwachukwu et al. (2010)
Bacillus sp. Kumar et al. (2007), Usha et al (2011)
Bacillus megaterium Abrusci et al. (2011)
Bacillus mycoides Seneviratne et al. (2006)
Lysinibacillus
Lysinibacillus Esmaeilimail (2013)
xylanilyticus
Priyanka and Archana (2011), Kathiresan
Pseudomonas sp. (2003), Nanda et al. (2010), Usha et al.
(2011), Skariyachan et al (2015)
Pseudomonas Nwachukwu et al. (2010), Kyaw et al.
aeruginosa (2012), Aswale (2010)
Pseudomonas
Pseudomonas putida Kyaw et al. (2012), Nwachukwu et al. (2010)
Pseudomonas
Kyaw et al. (2012)
syringae
Pseudomonas
Sharma and Sharma (2004)
stutzeri
Reddy (2008), Kathiresan (2003), Usha et al
Staphylococcus sp.
(2011)
Staphylococcus
Staphylococcus Priyanka and Archana (2011)
aureus
Staphylococcus
Chatterjee et al. (2010)
epidermis
Streptococcus sp. Reddy (2008), Kathiresan (2003)
Streptococcus lactis Priyanka and Archana (2011)
Streptococcus
Streptococcus
Aswale (2010)
aureus
Kumar et al (2007), Reddy (2008),
Micrococcus sp.
Kathiresan (2003)
Micrococcus
Micrococcus luteus Priyanka and Archana (2011)
Micrococcus lylae Aswale (2010)
Streptomyces sp. El shafei et al (1998), Usha et al (2011)
Streptomyces
Lee et al (1991), Pometto et al (1992)
vinidosporus T7A
Streptomyces Streptomyces badius
Lee et al (1991)
252
Streptomyces setonii
Lee et al (1991)
75 Vi 2
Sivan et al (2011), Chandra and Rustgi
Rhodococcus Rhodococcus ruber
(1997)

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 Polythene and environment

Rhodococcus
Fontanella et al (2009), Bonhomme (2003)
rhodochrous
Proteus Proteus vulgaris Priyanka and Archana (2011)
Listeria Listeria Kumar et al (2007)
Vibrio Vibrio Kumar et al (2007)
Bravibacillus
Bravibacillus Hadad et al (2005), Abrusci et al. (2011)
borstelensis
Serratia Serratia marscence Aswale (2010)
Nocardia Nocardia steroids Bonhomme et al (2003)
Arthrobacter Arthrobacter sp. Balasubramanian et al (2010)
Diplococcus Diplococcus sp. Reddy (2008)
Moraxella Moraxella sp. Reddy (2008), Kathiresan (2003)
Penicillium sp. Priyanka and Archana (2011)
Penicillium
Gilan et al. (2004)
funiculosum
Penicillium Penicillium
Seneviratne et al. (2006)
frequentans
Penicillium
Volke-sepulveda et al. (2002)
pinophilum
Volke-sepulveda et al. (2002), Aswale
(2010), Konduri et al. (2010), Priyanka and
Archana (2011), Cawthorn (1989),
Aspergillus niger
Kathiresan (2003), Gilan (2004), Reddy
(2008), Nwachukwu et al. (2010), Aswale
and Ade (2011), Esmaeilimail (2013)
Aspergillus Priyanka and Archana (2011), Reddy (2008),
ridiculans Usha et al. (2011)
Priyanka and Archana (2011), Reddy (2008),
Aspergillus flavus El-Shafei (1998), Usha (2011), Konduri et al.
(2010)
Priyanka and Archana (2011), Reddy (2008),
Aspergillus Aspergillus glaucus Kathiresan (2003), Aswale (2010), Cawthorn
(1989)
Aspergillus
Pramila and Ramesh (2011)
versicolor
Aspergillus spp. Pramila and Ramesh (2011)
Aspergillus oryzae Konduri et al. (2010), Konduri et al. (2011)
Aspergillus ornatus Reddy (2008)
Aspergillus cremus Reddy (2008)
Aspergillus candidus Reddy (2008)
Aspergillus
Kathiresan (2003), Singh and Gupta (2014)
nidulance
Aspergillus
Singh and Gupta (2014)
japonicus
Phanerochaete
Phanerochaete Lee et al. (1991), Vasile 1993
chrysosporium
Chaetomium
Chaetomium Gilan (2004)
globosum
Gliocladiurn Gliocladiurn virens Gilan (2004)

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 Polythene and environment

Pullularia Pullularia pullulans Gilan (2004)

Mucor Mucor sp. Sing and Gupta et al (2014)
Cladosporium
Cladosporium Bonhomme et al (2003)
cladosporides
Actinomycetes Rhodococcus ruber Gilan and Sivan (2013)

4.2 Polythene degrading enzyme

Microbes can degrade polythenes because of extracellular enzymatic secretions (Moser and
Lee 1992 and Azzarello and Van Vleet 1987). Due to the presence of CH2 group in polythene
structure as the only group, this makes polythene surface hydrophobic (Sangale et al., 2012).
These surfaces are made hydrophilic by initial degradation, resulting in insertion of
hydrophilic groups. Degradation of polythene occurs in 2 steps namely, primary degradation
and ultimate degradation. After degradation polythene is converted to low molecular weight
dimers or monomers due to the cleavage of the main chain (Laist 1997). Polythene
degradation is found to be quite similar to the degradation pathway followed by ligninolytic
fungi. In ligninolytic fungi like mushrooms and lignin degrading bacteria, extracellular
enzyme consist of oxidases, laccases and peroxidises which results in production of
extracellular hydrogen peroxide. Primary degradation results in production of CH4, CO2 and
H2O.

Table 2: Extracellular polythene degrading enzymes produced by various microorganisms

Microorganism
Enzymes produced References
responsible
Extracellular enzyme (not
Streptomyces sp. Pometto et al. 1992
characterized)
Lignin peroxidase,
Wood degrading fungi Manganese peroxidase, Sangale et al. 2012
phnoloxidase, laccase
Polycaprolactone
Alcaligenes faecalis Oda et al. 1998
depolymerase
Pseudomonas Lipase Skaryachan et al 2015

5. Conclusion

There should be strict rules and regulation for limiting the use of polythene to a certain
amount. Awareness camps should be organized in every corner of the city especially in slum
areas to aware people on restricting use of polythene and to use biodegradable polythenes
only. More and more microbes which can degrade polythene should be screened so as to
know exact mechanism of degradation and to know the gene responsible for it. Polythene
waste that is nonbiodegrdable can be used for other purposes like prepartaion of bitumen after
mixing with asphalt that can be used for road contruction (Akinpelu et al., 2013; Gürü et al.,
2014).

Acknowledgement

Authors are thankful to Dr. Ashok K Chauhan (Founder President), Mr Atul K Chauhan
(Chancellor,AUUP) and Director AIB for providing the necessary facilities to conduct the
study.

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