Occurrence of microbial community on plastic wastes in Terjun Landfill, North Sumatra

Abstract

Plastisphere is a term for any microbial community that grow and develop on the surface of plastic. There was still a lot of plastics that was readily disposed in landfills, which would makes it feasible to discover bacteria that could decompose plastic and be used in bioremediation. The present study aims to determine the number of microbial density (colonies) and obtainining a number of microbial (bacteria, fungi) isolates from four different types of plastics namely low-density polyethylene (LDPE), linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE), high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP). The density of bacterial population was the highest in LDPE, followed by LLDPE, PP, and HDPE. Meanwhile, the density and number of fungal population was exceptionally low in this study. A greater portion of gram-negative bacteria was larger than gram-positive bacteria with some filamentous fungi obtained from the isolation. The visual appearance using SEM analysis reveal the presence of mixed community between bacteria, fungi and yeast population.