RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Half-life of biodegradable plastics in the marine environment depends on material, habitat, and climate zone
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.01.31.429013
DO 10.1101/2021.01.31.429013
A1 Christian Lott
A1 Andreas Eich
A1 Dorothée Makarow
A1 Boris Unger
A1 Miriam van Eekert
A1 Els Schuman
A1 Marco Segre Reinach
A1 Markus T. Lasut
A1 Miriam Weber
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/02/01/2021.01.31.429013.abstract
AB The performance of the biodegradable plastic materials polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA), polybutylene sebacate (PBSe) and polybutylene sebacate co-terephthalate (PBSeT), and of polyethylene (LDPE) was assessed under marine environmental conditions in a three-tier approach. Biodegradation lab tests (20 °C) were complemented by mesocosm tests (20 °C) with natural sand and seawater and by field tests in the warm-temperate Mediterranean Sea (12 – 30 °C) and in tropical Southeast Asia (29 °C) in three typical coastal scenarios. Plastic film samples were exposed in the eulittoral beach, the pelagic open water and the benthic seafloor and their disintegration monitored over time. We used statistical modelling to predict the half-life for each of the materials under the different environmental conditions to render the experimental results numerically comparable across all experimental conditions applied. The biodegradation performance of the materials differed by orders of magnitude depending on climate, habitat and material and revealed the inaccuracy to generically term a material ‘marine biodegradable’. The half-life t0.5 of a film of PHA with 85 μm thickness ranged from 54 d on the seafloor in SE Asia to 1247 d in mesocosm pelagic tests. t0.5 for PBSe (25 μm) ranged from 99 d in benthic SE Asia to 2614 d in mesocosm benthic tests, and for PBSeT t0.5 ranged from 147 d in the mesocosm eulittoral to 797 d in Mediterranean benthic field tests. For LDPE no biodegradation could be observed. These data can now be used to estimate the persistence of plastic objects should they end up in the marine environments considered here and will help to inform the life cycle (impact) assessment of plastics in the open environment.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.