The extensive use of plastic and the absence of efficient and sustainable methods for its degradation has raised critical concerns about its disposal and degradation. Furthermore, the escalated use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and masks during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has put us under tremendous pressure of generating huge amounts of plastic waste. Traditional plastic waste disintegration protocols, while effective, pose additional inevitable environmental risks. Owing to this, almost all the used plastic is directly discarded into the marine and terrestrial bodies, causing great harm to the flora and fauna. Plastic has even started entering the food chain in the form of micro- and nano-plastics, leading to deleterious effects. Considering the global need for finding sustainable ways to degrade plastic, several approaches have been developed. Herein we highlight and rationally compare the recent reports on the development of benign alternatives for the sustainable disintegration of plastic detritus into value-added products. Here we discuss, in depth, photoreforming of a variety of polymers to liquid fuels under natural conditions; enzyme-based deconstruction of polymeric materials via microorganisms and their engineered mutants into useful virgin monomers at ambient temperature; and pyrocatalytic degradation of polyethylene through efficient synthetic materials into valuable fuels and waxes. By critically analyzing the methods, we also provide our opinion on such sustainable techniques and discuss newer approaches related to bioinspired and biomimetic chemistry principles for the management of plastic waste.

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迈向良性替代品：将塑料废物可持续转化为有价值的产品

塑料的广泛使用以及缺乏有效和可持续的降解方法引起了对其处置和降解的严重关注。此外，在持续的 COVID-19 大流行期间，个人防护设备 (PPE) 和口罩的使用升级，使我们面临产生大量塑料废物的巨大压力。传统的塑料废物分解协议虽然有效，但会带来额外的不可避免的环境风险。因此，几乎所有使用过的塑料都直接被丢弃到海洋和陆地中，对动植物造成了极大的危害。塑料甚至开始以微塑料和纳米塑料的形式进入食物链，导致有害影响。考虑到全球需要寻找可持续的方法来降解塑料，已经开发了几种方法。在此，我们强调并合理比较了最近关于开发可将塑料碎屑可持续分解为增值产品的良性替代品的报告。在这里，我们深入讨论了在自然条件下将各种聚合物光转化为液体燃料；基于酶的聚合物材料解构通过微生物及其工程突变体在环境温度下转化为有用的原始单体；通过高效合成材料将聚乙烯热催化降解为有价值的燃料和蜡。通过批判性地分析这些方法，我们还就此类可持续技术提供了我们的意见，并讨论了与用于管理塑料废物的生物启发和仿生化学原理相关的新方法。