Microbial Engineering for PHB Production and E-Waste Biomining: A Sustainable Approach

This review delves into the potential of microbial biotechnologies in tackling two major environmental issues that face modern society: the manufacturing of petroleum-based plastics and the management of electronic waste (E-waste). E-waste contains valuable and critical metals that are conventionally extracted using methods that pose a threat to the environment (Gopikrishnan et al., 2020). Through the novel process of biomining, microorganisms have been found to offer a more sustainable way of extracting these metals. Similarly, the production of ecologically-damaging petroleum-based plastics can be mitigated by biologically modifying microorganisms that are naturally capable of producing bioplastics, like polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), intracellularly (Tsang et al., 2019). This study addresses the current state of these microbial technologies as well as their drawbacks, ultimately culminating in a set of solutions that provide ways for these processes to be scaled up to an industrial level.