我国研发出可溶于海水的塑料
Chinese scientists have developed a plastic that degrades in seawater and could help curb the increasingly serious plastic pollution in the oceans. The new polyester composite material can decompose in seawater over a period ranging from a few days to several hundred days, leaving small molecules that cause no pollution, said Wang Gexia, a senior engineer at the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "For a long time, people focused on 'white pollution' on land. Plastic pollution in the seas only caught people's attention when more and more reports about marine animals dying from it appeared in recent years," said Wang. Scientists combined non-enzymic hydrolysis, water dissolution and biodegradation processes to design and invent the new material. About 4.8 million to 12.7 million ton of plastic waste goes into the seas very year, accounting for 60% to 80% of the total solid pollutants in the oceans, according to a conservative estimate by scientists. The institute has authorized four Chinese enterprises to use their technology, with three enterprises going into production with a total annual capacity of half the global biodegradable plastics, or 75,000 tons. China has given top priority to ecological environmental protection, contributing Chinese wisdom to resolving global pollution. |