Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the biodegradation of polyethylene by two bacterial strains isolated from polyethylene contaminated sites. This work revealed that the soil of areas contaminated with polyethylene is a good source of bacteria capable of decomposing plastic materials. The biodegradability of the two bacterial strains was evaluated by performing invasion studies, SEM analysis and Sturm assay. Strains capable of metabolizing complex plastics. The plastic samples tested in this study were plastic cups, plastic bags and milk carton lids. Among the samples, milk pods were shown to be optimally degraded (24.40%) by Pseudomonas sp. and plastic bags were found to have optimal degradability (20.40%) by Bacillus sp. after 45 days of incubation. In this study, the important variables affecting PE depletion of the contaminated sites by isolates B1 and B7 and the optimized values were determined by optimizing the values. Values were filtered using the central composite design (CCD) in the Response Surface Methodology.