oxo-biodegradation
Sign in to saveOxo-degradation refers to the breakdown mechanism caused by heat, light or oxygen on plastics that contain additives that accelerate the process of breaking them into smaller fragments called microplastics. These plastics contrast biodegradable or compostable plastics, which decompose at the molecular or polymer level. Oxo-degradable plastics are currently banned in the EU, but are still permitted in other jurisdictions such as the UK.
In the Vinony graph
Vinony's link graph records 20 inbound references to oxo-biodegradation, and connects out to British Columbia, International Standard Book Number and digital object identifier.
It sits within the topics Accuracy disputes from August 2018, Biodegradation and Plastics.
Vinony links it to 7 Wikipedia language editions.
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Encyclopedic overview
13 sectionsContents
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Oxo-degradation refers to the breakdown mechanism caused by heat, light or oxygen on plastics that contain additives that accelerate the process of breaking them into smaller fragments called microplastics. These plastics contrast biodegradable or compostable plastics, which decompose at the molecular or polymer level. Oxo-degradable plastics are currently banned in the EU, but are still permitted in other jurisdictions such as the UK.
The specific definitions are found in CEN (European Committee for Standardisation) Technical report CEN/TR 15351. "'Oxo-degradation' is degradation identified as resulting from oxidative cleavage of macromolecules". It describes ordinary plastics which abiotically degrade by oxidation in the open environment and create microplastics, but do not become biodegradable except over a very long period of time.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “oxo-biodegradation” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.