However, much of this is due to the type of plastic the plastic waste patches consist of. Virtually of them are formed from conventional plastic which, as we all know, lies around for hundreds of years. Some of them might consist of a few kilos of degradable plastic, but even these would only be degradable up to a point.

(Many of the popular degradable plastics fragment rather than degrade completely. This means they can still lie around in the ocean and pose a danger to marine life if ingested).

The solution surely lies in a ‘self-destructing’ plastic known as oxo-biodegradable. Oxo-bio plastic is still a fairly novel concept compared with other forms of degradable plastic currently in use. However, it is becoming increasingly popular, especially in developing countries with a growing plastic waste problem which not only pollutes the land, but also clogs up their rivers and water courses.

Among other things, oxo-bio plastic it has the following main benefits. First, it is completely degradable, so that when it does degrade, it does so without leaving any traces.

Secondly, it is a short-life plastic. If you are wondering how short a life it has, the answer is that it’s up to you!

You can “tell” when to degrade by programming it with a pre-set lifespan during manufacture, currently the only form of plastic which can.

(You can make it degrade in as little as six months onwards for environmentally sensitive areas, though in most cases, as with plastic shopping bags, this would not be very practical for the consumer).

Thirdly, it actually behaves quite well during its brief existence. Because it disappears completely after degrading, it leaves no harmful residues to be ingested by wildlife, unlike some other plastic degradables. Mercifully, it is also free of methane emissions, even when buried in a landfill. You can also recycle it and remake the recyclate back into oxo-bio plastic.

Professor Gerald Scott, a leading European expert in plastics technology, recently stated that if the plastic floating around in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch had been made of oxo-biodegradable plastic, most of it would all have degraded by now. So, no plastic, no patch!

UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme) has recently called for a worldwide ban on all plastic bags. It’s an tempting idea, but it would probably never work. Plastic bags are (regrettably) too useful to give up completely and people would always find a way round the ban by using other forms of plastic.

Of course we must all try to cut down on our use of plastic, but why can’t environmental bodies such as UNEP encourage people to switch to oxo-biodegradable plastic instead?

biomeenvironmental.com

Researcher at the University of Cape Town