Microbial technologies for environmental remediation: potential issues, challenges, and future prospects

Abstract

Abstract Environmental issues have been always at the forefront of sustainable development and have become a serious matter of concern in the 21st century. Environmental sustainability with rapid industrialization is one of the major challenges of the current scenario worldwide. Industries are the key drivers in the world economy, but these are also the major polluters due to the discharge of partially treated/untreated potentially toxic and hazardous wastes containing organic and inorganic pollutants, which cause environmental (soil and water) pollution and severe toxicity in living beings. To remediate/treat the contaminated sites/industrial effluents, microbial remediation technologies are gaining high interest for the remediation of contaminated environments due to their eco-friendly and sustainable nature, but they are currently under investigation at large scale. Therefore this chapter provides a comprehensive knowledge of the microbial remediation technologies and their applications in remediation of contaminated sites/industrial effluents with their merits and demerits as well as future directions in the field of research.