0973-7510 Journal of Pure and Applied Microbiology 2581-690X DR. M.N. Khan 10.22207/JPAM.12.3.60 Biodegradation - A Boon For Mitigating the Polyethylene Waste Mohan Naveen Kalaivani P Usha R Department of Microbiology, Karpagam Academy of Higher Education, Coimbatore - 641 021, Tamil Nadu, India. 30 09 2018 12 3 1553 1559 Copyright © 2018 The Author(s) 2018 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Plastic in our environment is a serious threat to the life on earth. Bioremediation is the only way out to mitigate the present problem. Actinomycetes strains from two different locations were isolated within Kerala state. Efficiency of strains for biodegradation collected from both the locations was compared using weight loss experiment. Experimental evidence on the basis of percentage degradation of LDPE strip shows that strains collected from waste dump yard are more efficient degraders of polyethylene waste. (DSR2-24%, DSR1-20%, DSR3- 8%) than those collected from virgin soil. (VSR3-13.2%, VSR2-8%, VSR1-4.8%). Actinomycetes are potential group of microorganisms which can be utilized for biodegradation of plastics. Bio-augmenting the soil with potential degraders will enhance the rate of degradation even more.

Keywords Biodegradation Actinomycetes Bioaugmentation