Citation:

Glaser, John A. Biological Degradation of Polymers in the Environment. Chapter 5, Plastics in the Environment. IntechOpen, London, Uk, , 73-93, (2019).

Impact/Purpose:

Waste plastics in the environment are a major health concern. The lifetime of these plastics may be changed through the involment of microbes. This book chapter offers a new insight to the chemistry physics and biology of polymer biodegradation in the environment. The review looks primarily at the major commercial polymers to expose the basic environmental fate mechanisms involved in the degradation of each polymer class. New discoveries of polymer biodegradation are explored to suggest that each may be built on for future application to waste polymers and plastics with an eye to microplastics and their corresponding fate and degradation.

Description:

Polymers present to modern society remarkable performance characteristics desired by a wide range of consumers but the fate of polymers in the environment has become a massive management problem. Polymer applications offer molecular structures attractive to product engineers desirous of prolonged lifetime properties. These characteristics also figure prominently in the environmental lifetimes of polymers or plastics. Recently, reports of microbial degradation of polymeric materials offer new emerging technological opportunities to modify the enormous pollution threat incurred through use of polymers/plastics. A significant literature exists from which developmental directions for possible biological technologies can be discerned. Each report of microbial mediated degradation of polymers must be characterized in detail to provide the database from which a new technology developed. Part of the development must address the kinetics of the degradation process and find new approaches to enhance the rate of degradation. The understanding of the interaction of biotic and abiotic degradation is implicit to the technology development effort.

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