Research and Development of Marine Biodegradable Plastics

Abstract

In May 2019, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced that it would promote the research and development of marine biodegradable plastics through industry, government, and academia as one of the solutions to the problems caused by marine plastic litter. At present, the number of candidate materials for marine biodegradable plastics is very limited, and their physical properties do not necessarily meet the requirements of the relevant applications. In order to achieve this, it is desirable to develop materials based on new ideas. In this article, we first introduce the science and technology behind the development of marine biodegradable plastics. In addition, the timing of the onset of degradation of biodegradable plastics in the ocean and the control of the rate of degradation to achieve timed biodegradability will be explained with examples.