Heavy Metal Waste Management to Combat Climate Crisis: An Overview of Plant-Based Strategies and Its Current Developments

Environmental pollution caused by heavy metals is currently a serious global problem. These deleterious heavy metal pollutants quickly build up in the environment causing a critical concern for agricultural production and food safety. An efficient and sustainable waste management system to remediate heavy metals in the environment is crucial for the survival of any ecosystem. Management of heavy metal contamination has so far been accomplished using a variety of physical, chemical, and biological approaches. Physical and chemical approaches typically have several drawbacks, e.g., they are high in cost they are labor intensive, they render irreversible changes to soil quality and they disrupt the native soil flora. Chemical approaches also have the potential to produce secondary pollution problems and are non-sustainable. Therefore, research to develop waste management methods that are affordable, efficient, and advantageous to the environment is in the spotlight. In this review, an age-old plant-based method of heavy metal waste management, called phytoremediation, has been described. At this point, the various strategic methods applied by hyperaccumulator plants have been summarized. The current developments of phytotechnology, involving the use of cutting-edge biotechnological tools in enhancing the scope and relevance of phytoremediation, have been described including the development of transgenics, the use of nanoparticles, earthworms, and microorganisms. We highlight the lacuna in the current information and suggest a desirable way ahead in the context of climate action. Furthermore, this green solution to heavy metal waste management has tremendous potential that all stakeholders of environmental management have heavily counted on, given the unprecedented battle against pollution in times of global climate change.