The following revision is taken from an Abstract by a Thai-speaking postgraduate student of chemical engineering:

Two principles of Academic Modesty are broken by the original drafting:

1. Do not praise your own work. As an academic writer, you may describe the work of other people as valuable, useful, interesting etc.: however, you may not describe your own work as valuable, useful, interesting etc. The closest you may come to such a statement is to express the hope that the work is valuable, useful, interesting, etc. (i.e. the judgement is for others to make, not you).
2. Show that you understand the limitations of your work. In the present case, even I, a non-expert, know that previous work has been done on biodegradation techniques: so clearly this cannot be a "first step" for science (though it was, clearly, a first step for the student).