Microbial biodegradation represents a promising approach to addressing global plastic pollution, yet the metabolic pathways and environmental origins of polymer-degrading microorganisms remain incompletely characterized. This review synthesizes current knowledge on biodegradation mechanisms across major polymer classes and identifies key environmental reservoirs harboring native plastic-degrading microbiota. Biodegradation pathways differ fundamentally according to polymer chemistry. Polyesters such as PET undergo hydrolytic cleavage by PETases and MHETases, releasing terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol for assimilation via the β-ketoadipate pathway and the TCA cycle. Biodegradable polyesters (PLA, PBAT, PHAs, PCL) are similarly hydrolyzed by cutinases, lipases, and depolymerases. In contrast, polyolefins (PE, PP) and polystyrene lack hydrolyzable bonds and require oxidative attack by laccases, peroxidases, and alkane monooxygenases, followed by β-oxidation to acetyl-CoA. Three principal environmental reservoirs supply plastic-degrading microorganisms: contaminated ecosystems including landfills and the plastisphere; soil microbiota contributing ligninolytic fungi and actinomycetes; and compost environments yielding thermostable enzymes such as leaf-branch compost cutinase. Across all environments, microbial consortia demonstrate superior degradation efficiency compared to single-species cultures, reflecting the enzymatic complexity required for complete polymer mineralization. Understanding these pathways and their environmental origins provides a foundation for biological plastic waste management strategies.

The progressive deployment of renewable energy systems has engendered a considerable increase in the generation of glycol-based coolant waste, specifically ethylene glycol (EG) and propylene glycol (PG), thereby raising significant environmental apprehensions. This review analyses the critical environmental challenge and examines the feasibility of microbial degradation as a viable and sustainable alternative to glycol waste treatment, while highlighting significant gaps in current hazardous glycol waste management practices. Present waste management practices are largely founded on incineration or membrane filtration approaches, both of which exhibit significant energy demands and inefficiencies in large-scale waste handling. Reported performance ranges from >99% EG recovery at 10–16 kWh/m³ by electrodialysis and 80–95% recovery at 2–4 MJ/kg by vacuum distillation, to ~17 MJ/kg combustion heat from incineration; biological methods, though promising, currently operate below 10% glycol concentration, an order of magnitude below the 10–100% range in real coolants. We analyze the current understanding of metabolic pathways involved in glycol biodegradation, drawing on the peer-reviewed literature, bioinformatics, and patent databases. Special attention is given to the challenges of high glycol concentrations in industrial coolants and the formation of toxic oxidation products during thermal aging. The review also explores recent advances in genetic engineering approaches to enhance microbial degradation efficiency. Finally, we discuss the potential integration of biological recycling methods into existing waste management systems and future prospects for converting glycol waste into value-added products through microbial biotransformation.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the media visibility of investments implemented in Wrocław, with a particular focus on the democratization of urban processes through the Wrocław Participatory Budget (WPB) and to study the public perception of these projects within the local information landscape. The paper presents an integrated analytical methodology combining geospatial data from the Spatial Information System of Wrocław (SIP) with textual data from the full corpus of local news articles from Wrocław. A hybrid data processing pipeline was used, including filtering of articles about Wrocław, geoparsing of location names, matching articles to investments using classic Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) models and embedding in language models such as HerBERT, and sentiment analysis using the XLM-T model. The results reveal strong imbalances in the visibility of WPB projects, that almost 90% of investments were not mentioned even once in the media. Temporal sentiment analysis indicated differences between categories of WPB projects. The results confirm the existence of “media deserts” and “islands of attention,” which leads to information exclusion for specific local communities and marginalized groups. This translates into asymmetry in residents’ knowledge of the real scope of the WPB program. The paper emphasizes the importance of Geographic Information System (GIS) fusion methods with natural language processing models (NLP) for urban research, and identifies directions for further analysis, including accompanying problems and limitations in the present day.

Small urban parks act as local acoustic refuges, yet their nocturnal soundscapes are rarely quantified at fine spatial scales. We assessed within-park spatio-temporal heterogeneity in Langiewicz Park (~1.1 ha), Wrocław, Poland, using a network of five autonomous AudioMoth recorders mounted on lighting poles at 3.5 m height during early spring campaigns (March–April 2025). Continuous nocturnal recordings (18:00–06:00) were collected, and for each recording, we computed a suite of ecoacoustic indicators capturing acoustic energy (RMS), biophony–anthrophony balance (NDSI), temporal complexity (ACI), spectral diversity (ADI), biotic activity (BI), and acoustic Entropy (H). Indicator time series were aggregated to 15 min resolution to characterise nocturnal trajectories, and dominant patterns were quantified using polynomial trend models and principal component analysis. Despite the small park area and inter-sensor spacing of 50–70 m, indicator distributions differed significantly among microphone locations, with particularly strong spatial contrasts observed in NDSI and BI. Seasonal shifts between March and April further modified the multivariate soundscape structure and the positioning of monitoring sites. These results demonstrate fine-scale nocturnal heterogeneity within a single compact urban park. Our findings suggest that multipoint monitoring design is essential to capture the complex micro-soundscape structures in urban green spaces that single-sensor approaches typically overlook.