Plastic waste that enters freshwater and oceans accumulates in the form of microplastics along the food chain of organisms, which threatens the life of marine organisms and further affects human health. Landfilled plastic wastes degrade very slowly and cause contamination of the soil, freshwater, and seawater. Plastic waste treatment comprises 79 % reclamation, 12 % incineration, and 9 % recycling. It is estimated that 6300 million metric tons of plastic waste had been generated as of 2015. However, these advantages of plastics result in overuse, causing a significant problem for the recycling and disposal of plastic waste. One of the most significant advantages of plastics is resistance to chemicals, water, and impact due to their polymer structure. The use of plastics is inexpensive, and convenient in real life and provides a wide range of properties available for industrial use. The amount of plastic produced on the planet is estimated to be about 10.5 billion metric tons to date. Plastic production across the globe is increasing substantially every year. Our results suggest that Bacillus cereus possesses a complete set of enzymes required to initiate the oxidation of the carbon chain of PP and will be used to discover new enzymes and genes that are involved in degrading PP. More importantly, high temperature gel permeation chromatography (HT-GPC) analysis showed that Bacillus cereus exhibited quantitatively a higher biodegradability of PP compared to the gut microbiota. Additionally, the gut microbiota composed of diverse microbial species showed equal oxidation of PP compared to Bacillus cereus. The chemical structural changes were further investigated using X-ray photoelectron microscopy and Fourier - transform - infrared spectroscopy, and it was confirmed that the oxidation of the PP surface proceeded with the formation of carbonyl groups (C=O), ester groups (C–O), and hydroxyl groups (–OH) by Bacillus cereus. We analyzed the microbial degradation of the PP surface using scanning electron microscopy and energy - dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and confirmed that the physical and chemical changes were caused by Bacillus cereus and the gut microbiota. We also studied the biodegradability of PP by the gut microbiota compared with Bacillus cereus. Here, we present results on the physicochemical and structural studies of PP biodegradation by Bacillus cereus isolated from the gut of the waxworms, Galleria mellonella larvae. Therefore, biodegradation of PP becomes very important. Polypropylene (PP) is the second most used plastic used in various industries, and it has been widely used in the production of personal protective equipment such as masks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Biodegradation of plastic waste using microorganisms has been proposed as one of the solutions to the increasing worldwide plastic waste.
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