Industrial polymers are very resistant to degradation. Their natural elimination is often impossible and the environment suffers long-term pollution.
This pollution can be:
* Visual: films, polyethylene bags, PVC or polyester bottles…
* Physical: obstruction to flowing water…
* Chemical: chlorine of PVC…
Because plastic consumption is continuously increasing there is significant interest in making common non-degradable polymers biodegradable to ensure the “cleaning” of the environment.
The high road is biodegradability but the constraints are stringent and other routes are studied as:
* Photolysis
* Solubility…and so on.
Some of these routes are not really satisfactory because only visual pollution is suppressed.
Mastering natural degradation is difficult because of the effects of multiple interacting parameters:
* Heat
* Oxygen
* Light and UV
* Moisture
* Micro-organisms
Biodegradation, for non-biodegradable polymers, is obtained by using high levels of biodegradable additives.