Microbial and enzymatic degradation of plastics: Opportunities and constraints for plastic waste remediation.

Microbial and enzymatic degradation of plastics faces critical challenges in validation and mechanistic understanding, limiting practical application despite recent advances.

• Why it matters: Addressing plastic waste is urgent due to widespread environmental contamination, and current methods lack reliable evidence of true biodegradation, hindering effective remediation strategies.
• What they did: The review synthesizes recent research on biodegradation mechanisms for hydrolysable and non-hydrolysable plastics, emphasizing analytical limitations and strategies to distinguish genuine degradation from surface deterioration.
• The result: Integrating mechanistic insights with rigorous evaluation criteria offers a framework to improve validation and move plastic biodegradation research toward practical, environmentally meaningful solutions.