FIGURE 2.

Weathering as an essential prerequisite for microbial colonization and enzymatic degradation of plastics. (A) The main abiotic factors are indicated and are mainly based on mechanical and physical destruction. (B) Increasing particle number results in decreasing particle size and strongly increasing overall surface of larger plastics broken down. (C) Insects, other animals, fungi and algae can be involved in biofouling and polymer disruption. Insects (worms, larvae) and snails eat through larger plastic particles of polystyrene (PS), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyethylene (PE) (Bombelli et al., 2017; Song et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2015a). (D) Possible biotic and abiotic mechanisms as a part of biofouling. Random oxygenations can be involved in the hydroxylation olefins to break within the polymer at very low frequencies (Chamas et al., 2020; Norrish & Bamford, 1936).