Microbial Communities: A Promising Tool for Treatment of Wastewater and Solid Waste

One of the main causes of environmental deterioration is the growing amount of pollution caused by rapid urbanisation. Potentially toxic elements can be found in industrial wastewater systems and solid wastes along the roadside. Wastewater treatment is the process of removing pollutants from wastewater and transforming it into effluent that may be recycled back into the water cycle. The waste of one creature is sometimes great food for another. During waste-water treatment, many solid wastes produced by human acts are periodically destroyed by microbes under controlled settings. Bacteria, the simplest organisms on Earth, absorb toxic chemicals released by unintended releases such as oil spills. Untreated wastewater comprising harmful chemicals discharged by numerous sectors poses a threat to the environment and disrupts the ecological balance. Microbial communities are assemblages of microbes that share a living environment. The community's microbial populations can interact in a variety of ways, such as food webs or as symbiotic organisms. The biodegradation of many hazardous organic pollutants can be linked to a vast variety of microbial enzymes. This chapter is going to help us learn how microbes as a community can degrade these harmful and toxic pollutants.