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Recently, there is a growing research interest in the applications and development of novel sustainable hydrogel materials in waste water treatment because of radically distinctive chemical and physical characteristics of hydrogels such as hydrophilicity, swell ability and modifiability to name a few. Hydrogels have exposed the hypernym functioning in the removal of a wide range of aqueous pollutants containing toxic dyes and heavy metal ions. A large amount of water gets incorporated in the three dimensional networks of hydrophilic structures of hydrogels. The prime objective of this review article is to render a presentation on the recent advances in the modifications of sodium alginate based hydrogels for the adsorptive removal of toxic pollutants. In addition, article also briefly gives the classification and properties of hydrogels and alginate.

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Recycling is groundwork of the worldwide efforts to diminish the amount of plastics in waste. Mostly around 7.8-8.2 million tons of poorly-used plastics enter the oceans every year. Nonbiodegradable plastics settlements in landfills are uncertain, which hinders the production of land resources. Non-biodegradable plastic solid wastes, carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, various air pollutants, cancerous polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins, released to the environment cause severe damage and harmfulness to the inhabitants. Due to the bio-degradability and renewability of biopolymers, petroleum-based plastics can be replaced with bio-based polymers in order to minimize the environmental risks. In this review article, bio-degradability of polymers has been discussed. The mechanisms of bio-recycling have been particularly emphasized in the present article.

Due to their superior properties, plastics derived from petroleum have been extensively used almost in everyday life since last few decades. Because of lack in the manageability of plastic solid waste, their volume is increasing steadily in the natural world. Unfortunately, the disposal of plastics wastes in the oceans and land filling has led to a global issue. To effectively and efficiently deal with plastic solid waste is becoming a great challenge for the society as plastic solid waste creates big threat to our environment. Recycling of plastics solid waste should be performed to produce products having same quality to original plastics. This review article gives an overview of plastics solid waste with particular emphasis on the recent progress in polystyrene based plastics.