why does plastic deteriorate into microplastic. Why cant we break microplastic into just carbon chains?
In: Chemistry
Most structural materials in nature (lignin, cellulose, etc) have natural, biological methods to decompose them into their original building blocks to be repurposed for other processes within the cell/organism. Plastic is so new, evolutionarily, that essentially nothing breaks it down in nature. It doesn’t decompose like natural materials, it weathers down from physical processes into pieces so small they’re effectively impossible to filter out. That’s microplastics.
Latest Answers