Why are plastics as non-biodegrable materials
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The organisms that decompose organic matter the ones that start turning your apple brown the instant you cut it open "have evolved over billions of years to attack certain types of bonds that are common in nature," Peters told Life's Little Mysteries.
"For example, they can very quickly break down polysaccharides to get sugar. They can chew up wood. But they see a polypropylene with all its carbon-carbon bonds, and they don't normally break something like that down so there aren't metabolic pathways to do it," he said.
But if all you have to do to make propylene subunits turn into polypropylene is heat them up, why doesn't nature ever build polypropylene molecules?
According to Peters, it's because the carbon-carbon bonds in polypropylene require too much energy to make, so nature chooses other alternatives for holding together large molecules. "It's easier for organisms to synthesize peptide bonds than carbon-carbon bonds," he said. Peptide bonds, which link carbon to nitrogen, are found in proteins and many other organic molecules
"For example, they can very quickly break down polysaccharides to get sugar. They can chew up wood. But they see a polypropylene with all its carbon-carbon bonds, and they don't normally break something like that down so there aren't metabolic pathways to do it," he said.
But if all you have to do to make propylene subunits turn into polypropylene is heat them up, why doesn't nature ever build polypropylene molecules?
According to Peters, it's because the carbon-carbon bonds in polypropylene require too much energy to make, so nature chooses other alternatives for holding together large molecules. "It's easier for organisms to synthesize peptide bonds than carbon-carbon bonds," he said. Peptide bonds, which link carbon to nitrogen, are found in proteins and many other organic molecules
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Hi There!!!petroleum-based plastics like PET don't decompose the same way organic material does. This kind of decomposition requires sunlight, notbacteria. When UV rays strike Plastic they break the bonds holding the long molecular chain together.
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