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Cited by 488

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 180 of the 180 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Plastic wastes biodegradation: Mechanisms, challenges and future prospects

Ali, Sameh S., Elsamahy, Tamer, Al-Tohamy, Rania, Zhu, Daochen, Mahmoud, Yehia A.-G., Koutra, Eleni, Metwally, Metwally A., Kornaros, Michael, Sun, Jianzhong·2021·Science of The Total Environment

Abstract

The growing accumulation of plastic wastes is one of the main environmental challenges currently faced by modern societies. These wastes are considered a serious global problem because of their effects on all forms of life. There is thus an urgent need to demonstrate effective eco-environmental techniques to overcome the hazardous environmental impacts of traditional disposal paths. However, our current knowledge on the prevailing mechanisms and the efficacy of synthetic plastics' biodegradation still appears limited. Under this scope, our review aims to comprehensively highlight the role of microbes, with special emphasis on algae, on the entire plastic biodegradation process focusing on the depolarization of various synthetic plastic types. Moreover, our review emphasizes on the ability of insects' gut microbial consortium to degrade synthetic plastic wastes. In this view, we discuss the schematic pathway of the biodegradation process of six types of synthetic plastics. These findings may contribute to establishing bio-upcycling processes of plastic wastes towards biosynthesis of valuable metabolic products. Finally, we discuss the challenges and opportunities for microbial valorization of degraded plastic wastes.

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Crossref · 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146590

Cites

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Metadata

Authors
Ali, S. S., Elsamahy, T., Al-Tohamy, R., Zhu, D., Mahmoud, Y. A.-G., Koutra, E., Metwally, M. A., Kornaros, M., & Sun, J.
Venue
Science of The Total Environment
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2021-08
Volume
780
Pages
146590
ISSN
0048-9697 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3136826890
Cited by
488
References
180
FWCI
16.29
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Plastic wastes biodegradation: Mechanisms, challenges and future prospects. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146590
The paper
Ali, S. S., Elsamahy, T., Al-Tohamy, R., Zhu, D., Mahmoud, Y. A.-G., Koutra, E., Metwally, M. A., Kornaros, M., & Sun, J. (2021). Plastic wastes biodegradation: Mechanisms, challenges and future prospects. Science of The Total Environment. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146590

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.