As stated in the biosphere press release:
“Current culture is lead to believe that plastic is not biodegradable. This is incorrect. All plastic is organic in nature and has been proven to biodegrade by microorganisms by several differant groups, some of them being high school students in Canada and Ben Gurion University scientists in Israel. This information has paved the way for BioSphere to bring to market the following technology and become a rapidly growing worldwide used technology.
The BioSphere technology allows microorganisms to produce CO2 and CH4,
both of these are the result of the consumption of the plastic. When microorganisms consume anything aerobically or anaerobically these two gases are produced. Anaerobic biodegradation produces CH4 and Aerobic biodegradation produces CO2. The BioSphere technology allows the microbes to consume the plastic product in all active microbial environments.
The Science:
BioSphere Plastic LLC technology is built on the fundamental properties of building polymers and depolymerization.
In the molecular world, the small subunits that ultimately link together to form larger molecules are called monomers, which literally means “single unit” (mono = one). When a bunch of monomers join together into a much larger molecule, they form a polymer, meaning “many units” (poly = many).
How does this “linking together” happen? There is a process by which this joining usually occurs, called dehydration synthesis. Two monomers line up next to each other, a hydrogen (H) from one monomer binds with a hydroxyl group (OH) from another monomer, and voilà! A water molecule is born: H+ + OH- = H2O.
During dehydration synthesis, two subunits, or monomers, bind to each other where they were once bound to their respective hydrogen (–H) or hydroxyl (–OH) groups.
This blissful union is presided over by an enzyme that is mainly there to help speed things along. The name of the process is dehydration synthesis because monomers are literally coming together and synthesizing a polymer by dehydrating, or removing a water molecule.
This is how a polymer is formed. How a polymer is hydrolyzed is the basis of our technology.
This is done by the addition of water between the bonds. Now the question that people wonder is how we do just that.
Anytime you allow water to attack the bonds between polymers this allows for hydrolyzing of the bonds which in turn lowers the molecular weight of the product. The addition of BioSphere additive introductes key elements into the polymer structure which allow hydrolyzation of the polymer.
Microbes produce enzymes, these enzymes are part of the organic cycle which produce reactions. Reactions by enzymes which are produced only by microorganisms create catalysts which are formed by gram-negative and grampositive bacteria. The catalysts accelerate metabolic reactions. The metabolic reaction we use (even though there are multiple metabolic pathways in this reaction) is the carbohydrate metabolism.
We boost the ATP to carry more energy back to the pyruvic acid (Anaerobic) or the Acetyl CoA(Aerobic) cycles. This in turn creates proteins or lipids from the Pyruvic Acid cycle (Anaerobic) and acetyl CoA cycle(Aerobic).
This process created by microorganisms does not occur on the shelf, nor does it occur when water is in contact with the plastic. This reaction of microorganisms only occurs when the product is placed in an active microbial environment. BioSphere additive attracts over 600 differant types of microbes to consume the polymer. The enzymes that the microbes produce react with the BioSphere addtiive creating a catalyst that breaks down the molecular weight of the polymer making it easier for microorganisms to consume the plastic. This is called biodegradation.”
https://www.biosphereplastic.com/