Mitigating the negative impacts of e-waste from the mine to the municipality using the power of microbes

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The long-term vision for my research program is to expand the known biodiversity of microbes living in contaminated habitats and identify novel physiological pathways that can be used for sustainable waste reclamation. My initial research will concentrate on microbe-mediated metal cycling in e-waste. As the demand for consumer electronics has increased in the last decade, so has the environmental footprint associated with their manufacturing and disposal. In 2019 alone, it is estimated that 53.6 million tons of e-waste were produced at the global scale. The inability to properly manage e-waste has created a scenario in which managing e-waste is challenging because it represents a contamination source but also contains valuable metals that could be recycled, mitigating the burden of large-scale mining operations. The global growth of e-waste has created a new and important environment for microbes that can directly interact with toxic and valuable metals. To date, microbial influence on the fate of metals in e-waste is poorly understood. Moreover, how e-waste's unique metal chemistry has shaped microbial metabolic pathways that could be used for waste reclamation remains unexplored. My program is underpinned by 3 short-term objectives: A) to provide the first metabolic models for microbial metal cycling in habitats contaminated with e-waste; B) to identify novel physiological pathways for metal cycling; and C) to validate sustainable biological metal reclamation strategies for e-waste. Objective A will use exploratory meta-omics surveys (i.e., whole community DNA and protein analyses) coupled to geochemical analyses to provide comprehensive biogeochemical models for metal cycling in habitats contaminated with e-waste. Objective B will test the hypothesis that unique mixtures of metals occurring in their elemental states in e-waste have selected for novel redox cycling enzymes involved in metal metabolism and detoxification. Objective C will focus on optimizing biological waste reclamation strategies for e-waste using stable microbial consortia. This research program will mitigate the negative impacts of consumer electronics from the mine where metals are extracted, to the municipalities where they are disposed of. This research will provide fundamental insights into how microbes are adapting to Earth's fastest growing waste stream by identifying novel metal cycling pathways. These discoveries will be translated into innovative biological waste reclamation strategies that can be used for urban mining to decrease our reliance on conventional ore mining. This research will demonstrate the benefits of biological waste reclamation strategies to industry and incentivize the adoption of more sustainable recycling practices in the future. I anticipate that this program will reshape our view of metal biogeochemistry in contaminated habitats and position Canada as a world-leader in developing sustainable biotechnology to support a circular economy.