Soil Remediation Under Microplastics Pollution

The problematic of microplastics pollution in the terrestrial environment has only received attention recently by different sectors of the world society. Although most part of the research has focused in the beaches and oceans, the agricultural sites are the most vulnerable areas, because substrates containing microplastics, such as sewage sludge and compost, produce an ecosystem alteration by itself and also they constitute a vehicle of these particles that are unintentionally added to the agricultural soils into deeper soil layers, and in most of the cases, end up later on in the marine environment through run-off or by means of submarine groundwater discharges. In addition, the use of plastic mulch, which was initially a very innovative invention to maintain soil moisture and promote crops, is now a source of contamination when it is not properly collected from the ground. In this chapter, a discussion about the steps to follow to perform a remediation of soils contaminated by microplastics will be discussed. This chapter does not intend to present new alternatives or solutions, but rather discusses what could be the actions to follow in order to develop a technology that could be useful, accessible, and applicable in all corners of our planet. Nevertheless, until now there is no magic wand to make the plastic pollution disappear in the soil of agricultural sites. However, microorganisms belonging to digestive tract of invertebrates (i.e., those from the phylum Firmicutes) constitute a very promising tool in order to solve the problem of plastic pollution in soils.