Microplastics spatiotemporal distribution and plastic-degrading bacteria identification in the sanitary and non-sanitary municipal solid waste landfills

The municipal solid waste landfill (MSWL) is an important source of microplastics (MPs) and a huge bioreactor for plastic-degrading microorganisms (PDM). However, the spatiotemporal distribution and degradation mechanisms of MPs in MSWLs are unclear. Therefore, they were studied using the samples drilled in a sanitary landfill (SL) and an non-sanitary landfill (NSL). The results showed that there were a lot of polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), polyurethane (PU), Polyamide (PA), Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in the landfill, and their abundance ranged from 0 to 80 items/g. The MPs surface gradually faded, became rough and even yielded cracks and holes with the landfill depth and age increase. The tiny-size MPs (< 100 µm) were the most abundant and their amount significantly increased from 28.14% to 49.13% in SL and from 24.54% to 59.51% in NSL, respectively, while large-size MPs were significantly reduced from the top to the bottom. Lysinibacillus (0.21%~67.87%) and Bacillus (0.10%~67.00%) were the dominate PDMs in SL and Candidatus_Caldatribacterium (5.06%~73.48%) was the dominate in NSL. The PE degradation was closely related to Candidatus_Cloacimonas (r = 0.688*) and Candidatus_Caldatribacterium (r = 0.680*); PS and PA were closely related to Candidatus_Contubernalis (r = 0.595*~0.705*) and PVC was closely related to Candidatus_Caldatribacterium (r = 0.547*). In addition to physical and chemical effects, biological effects can also promote the MPs formation in MSWLs.