Is the plastic material in a flexible packaging product (e.g. a shopping bag) after degradation reduced to zero?
Flexible plastic packaging, by its nature, has properties that are essential to provide effective packaging of products. These properties include water resistance, flexibility and strength. The long entangled molecular chains within a polymer determine these properties. With the oxidative action of the molecular ‘backbone’ collapses. The initial result is embrittlement leading to disintegration – the material can no longer be considered as a plastic. A loss of strength and then ultimately, after microbial deterioration has completed, the overall degradation process will have resulted in the creation of some H2O, some CO2, and a small amount of biomass.
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