Facts You Need to Know About Degradable Plastics (On)

Plastic is difficult to degrade, and it is easy to produce harmful substances when burning, which is a difficult problem for current garbage disposal. Especially film plastics are mostly disposable and difficult to recycle.

In order to solve this problem, we have developed degradable plastics-which have the properties of traditional plastics and degradable.

Green biodegradable bag wholesaler to share with you: Degradable plastics may not be bio-based plastics.

Green Biodegradable Vegetable Bag

Green biodegradable vegetable bags may use bio-based raw materials, but may also contain petrochemical raw materials (or a mixture of both) that enhance biodegradable additives.

Bio-based raw materials are usually natural polymers (such as starch, cellulose, chitin) or agricultural and sideline products produced by microbial fermentation or synthesis of biodegradable polymers, such as thermoplastic starch plastics, polyhydroxy fatty acid esters (PHA), Polylactic acid (PLA), starch / polyvinyl alcohol, etc. belong to this type of plastic.

Many polylactic acid (PLA) is produced from corn starch

Traditional petroleum-based plastics can be manufactured to a certain extent as biodegradable plastics (such as oxidatively degradable plastics). Starch is usually added to petroleum-based plastics to make it easy to break down, but it only breaks down into smaller volumes Petroleum-based plastics.

In addition, even biodegradable plastics require the addition of additive chemicals to impart specific properties, as is the case with traditional plastics.

Degradation is not necessarily completely biodegradable

Biodegradable plastic bags can be divided into fully biodegradable plastics and destructive biodegradable plastics, as well as photodegradable plastics.

Destructive biodegradable plastics, like the aforementioned oxidatively degradable plastics, currently include traditional petroleum-based plastics that are modified (or filled) with starch. They are biodegradable starches that are degraded into smaller petroleum-based plastics. Debris. Because microplastics are still produced after decomposition, they are not completely degradable, and some countries have begun to ban oxo-degradable plastics. France banned the plastic in 2015, and Spain introduced a similar ban in 2016. Retailers in the UK are no longer using plastic bags made of oxidized biodegradable plastic. However, compared to traditional petroleum-based plastics, such plastics are more easily broken because of their natural environment, at least reducing the risk of marine life being fatal due to accidental eating or being entangled.

Fully biodegradable plastics are made entirely of bio-based materials, all of which can be biodegraded into carbon dioxide and water. For example, Jilin has issued a plastic ban. Most plastic bags are known to use PLA and PHA plastics. Jilin also has a special polylactic acid industrial park.

Photodegradable plastics introduce photosensitive groups on the main chain of the polymer or add photosensitizers and photoinitiators to the plastic to make the traditional plastics photodegradable. It refers to the orderly breakage of polymer molecular chains under the action of sunlight, leading to their destruction and degradation. In the natural environment, light, heat, etc. act on photodegradable plastics, which can cause plastic large molecules to break down into small molecules. However, as the name suggests, photodegradable plastics cannot be degraded when no light is visible (such as being buried in soil).

Degradable is usually under the condition of industrial compost. At present, most fully biodegradable plastic products on the market, such as the degradable express packaging introduced by Ali, are degradable under industrial composting conditions, not natural conditions.

The general European standard EN13432 for packaging compost in the EU packaging waste law only requires biodegradable plastics to biodegrade under specific conditions (at an extended temperature above 50 ° C) in an industrial environment. Under different conditions, such as the marine environment, comprehensive and rapid biodegradability cannot be guaranteed. Even under industrial composting conditions, it usually takes 3-6 months to degrade.