2021-09-17 14:04:56
Plastic bags are not just polymer materials. Supermarkets, vegetable farms, fruit shops, takeaways, food preservation, travel, garbage sorting...In life, you almost always encounter plastic bags of different types and colors. Plastic bags play a huge role and bring great convenience to people's lives.
When it comes to the most common contemporary chemicals in life, plastic is one of them. Because of its stable physical and chemical properties, it is widely used in packaging, catering, home appliances, agriculture and many other fields.
Looking back on the development history of plastics, the position of plastic bags is very important. Since Sweden's Celloplast company applied for a patent for polyethylene plastic bags and put them on the market in 1965, plastic bags have quickly become popular in Europe and quickly replaced paper and cloth bags.
According to data from the United Nations Environment Programme, plastic bags accounted for 80% of the European bagging market by 1979, and it took less than 15 years. After that, it soon achieved the domination of the global bagging market. As of the end of 2020, the global market for plastic bags has exceeded 300 billion U.S. dollars (Grand View Research data).
However, with the popularity of plastic bags, environmental problems caused by large-scale use have also begun to appear. In 1997, the Pacific Garbage Strip was discovered, mainly composed of plastic garbage (plastic bottles and plastic bags) dumped into the ocean. Corresponding to the 300 billion U.S. dollar market, there will be 150 million tons of plastic waste in the ocean at the end of 2020, and it will increase by 11 million tons per year.
The key to the huge accumulation of plastic garbage in the ocean is that the chemical structure of traditional plastics is relatively stable, so it is difficult to degrade in the natural environment, which brings acute environmental pollution problems. (Non-degradable plastics are collectively referred to as traditional plastics hereinafter) However, because traditional plastics are now widely used and their physical and chemical properties are suitable for many application scenarios, they are difficult to be easily replaced by adding productivity and cost advantages.
Therefore, it not only has the main physical and chemical properties of traditional plastics, making it suitable for most of the existing plastics use scenarios, but also can rapidly degrade under natural conditions to reduce pollution. The degradable plastics that meet these two key points can be said to be The best solution at the moment. The replacement of old things by new things usually takes an extraordinary process, especially to replace the traditional plastics that dominate in many fields. Whether biodegradable plastics can be a big task, investors who do not understand this market must have a lot of doubts.
If an industry wants to make a big development, it is usually inseparable from related policy support, and the same is true for biodegradable plastics. In order to control the pollution caused by the use of traditional plastics, my country has experienced a gradual tightening of its related policies in the past 20 years, which is consistent with the general tone of environmental protection policy changes.
However, due to the rapid development of consumer industries such as food delivery and express delivery, the use of traditional plastics under the old plastic restrictions has not decreased but increased. Environmental problems have become more serious, and the original intention of plastic pollution control has not changed, and policy upgrades have become inevitable. At the same time, policies continue to encourage the use of biodegradable plastics to replace traditional plastics, and provide alternative guidelines for usage scenarios, such as commodity packaging bags, supermarket shopping bags, disposable tableware, agricultural film covers, and so on.
There is a long way to go in the treatment of plastic pollution. In addition to policy guarantees, it is also very necessary to raise public awareness of environmental protection through long-term education, deepen understanding of the meaning of environmental protection, and cultivate the habit of using biodegradable plastics.
As a class of chemical products, biodegradable plastics have different physical and chemical properties and operating costs among different varieties. At present, there are two common classification methods for degradable plastics:
1. According to the degradation mechanism, it can be divided into three categories: biodegradable plastics, photo degradable plastics and photo-biodegradable plastics. Among them, biodegradable plastics are currently the mainstream varieties.
2. According to synthetic raw materials, it can be divided into two categories: bio-based degradable plastics and petroleum-based degradable plastics.
1. The advantage of environmentally friendly plastic bags is naturally environmental protection. It takes 200 years for ordinary plastic bags to decompose, and the pollution is serious. Environmentally friendly plastic bags are easily decomposed after being discarded and decomposed into water and carbon dioxide, so that they will not damage the soil,Green.
2. Reduce the use of ordinary plastics. It is still difficult for ordinary plastic bags to completely exit the market. After all, many merchants and self-employed prefer ordinary plastic bags with high quality and low price, so it is not possible in a short time. Eco-friendly plastic bags, environmentally conscious businesses will use the eco-friendly bags, reduce the use of ordinary plastic bags, and be more environmentally friendly
3. Non-toxic and harmless, ordinary plastic bags are made of polyethylene, etc., and chemical reactions will occur when exposed to heat. If they are filled with hot food just out of the pot, it is easy to contaminate the food, and there is a safety hazard for human consumption. Environmentally friendly plastic bags are will not.
In addition, environmentally friendly plastic bags can also greatly consume crop waste, water such as straws, etc., in which plant starch components are extracted, so that it can be. Manufacture environmentally friendly plastic bags at lower cost, killing two birds with one stone.
