HOST:
Being concerned about the environmental and human health adverse effects posed by plastics，
Dr. Mukesh Doble and Dr. Trishul Artham from the Department of Biotechnology，Indian Institute of Technology Madras， Chennai， India，have been searching for safe ways of decomposing plastics.

Prof. Mukesh Doble (m): As scientist and technologists I feel it’s our duty also to find out some solution for the problem they are creating once they are disposed of. And that’s how we started looking at plastic degradation.

HOST:
Dr. Doble and Dr. Artham have invested years of effort in identifying microorganisms in soils
and oceans which decompose plastics.

Prof. Mukesh Doble (m):
Here， we’re also looking at several other polymers，and see how it interacts with the environment. This is a polyester and we’re seeing how，whether it’s degrading if we put it in soil or in the ocean. These are other type of fungi which can degrade a large number of plastics. So one of the type of work which we do is also identifying microorganisms， fungi which are available in nature，which can help in the degradation of all these polymers. And we look through the microscope trying to characterize the organism，and tell what type of organism it is and so on.
We are looking at polymers，how they interact with organisms，what’s happening to the polymers when they’re exposed to fungus， when they’re exposed to bacteria，and in turn， what is happening to the bacteria when it is in contact with these polymers. When we throw the polymer in the open， and then there is a lot of sun rays，solar rays come in. So in order to simulate that，
we have a ＵＶ (ultraviolet) chamber where we can put our polymer for a １０ days，２０ days，
３０ days and see what happens to the polymer. It’s trying to simulate the open dump yard where the waste polymers are disposed currently. So these are ＵＶ chambers.