Rubber is a wonderfully useful and malleable material. Like most materials though, rubber degradation will eventually occur over time due to common environmental factors like heat, light and ozone.
Natural and synthetic rubber, and plastic deteriorate continuously. It is, therefore, important for custodians of collections to be aware that by properly controlling the agents of deterioration, the lifetime of these materials can be extended.
To answer the question of how long it takes rubber to biodegrade, the answer is anywhere between ten to hundreds of years. Even made from natural resources, rubber is not easily biodegradable, so it does not break down fast because of the manufacturing process.
Rubber is non-biodegradable and takes hundreds of years to decompose in the environment, often leading to accumulation in landfills and oceans, which can cause harm to wildlife and ecosystems. Overall, rubber is not considered environmentally friendly per se.
The biodegradation of rubber is a slow process; therefore, it requires long incubation periods (i.e. from some weeks to months) to allow the biomass growth and significative modifications on the rubber mass/structure (Ali Shah et al., 2013).
Rubber Degradation
Rubber deterioration caused by oxidative or thermal aging can be accelerated further due to reactive gases and stress placed on the rubber, resulting in the rubber becoming faded, cracked, and less flexible. Both soft and hard degradation can occur to rubber, however, the latter is more common.
Natural rubber is widely considered a more eco-friendly and better product than synthetic rubber, but it still presents some issues. Natural rubber contributes to deforestation, biodiversity loss, pollution, and more. But climate change and disease also threaten natural rubber.
Natural rubber is eco-friendly. Harvesting and using natural rubber has less impact on the environment, and the rubber tree is a crop that can be cultivated sustainably to protect forests and maintain the global carbon balance in the atmosphere.
Rubber is durable, and more eco-friendly than plastic. It lasts longer, and stands up better against heat and cold than plastics. It's safer for your products, too, with no estrogen-mimicking toxins like BPA to worry about.
Technically, yes! Rubber comes from the sap of a rubber tree, and the rule with composting is: If it once was alive, it can be composted. However, rubber takes a long time to break down or biodegrade, so it's best to reuse rubber bands rather than toss them in the compost bin.
What is rubber deterioration? Most elastomers undergo rubber degradation over time and the most common rubber deterioration causes are exposure to light, oxygen (ozone) and heat.
It is a permanent deformation of a material after compressive forces have been applied to it over a prolonged period of time. In elastomeric materials, prolonged compression causes the material to lose its resiliency and deflection, i.e., the capacity to return to its original form.
Rates of decomposition will be affected by the environment. For example, balloons in water tend to decompose somewhat faster than balloons on land. Further analysis has revealed that natural rubber can take weeks or months to start decomposing.
Exposure to Oxygen – Oxygen reacts with the long-chain polymers in the rubber, causing an oxidation reaction that breaks down these chains. Thus, the day that a tire is made, it begins aging as it is exposed to oxygen in the tire shop.
Rubber materials and thermoplastic elastomers are often used in demanding environments and in components with high demands on reliability even over a long operation time – 10 years and more are not unusual.
Vinyl is not only an effective and green alternative to rubber, it is also inexpensive. The synthetic process uses simple chemicals and can be cooked up in the lab cheaply. Vinyl can also be recycled making it more environmentally responsible.
EPDM sheets can be recycled after use for things such as the rubber mats used in children's playgrounds or used as fuel to help reduce dependency on fossil fuels. EPDM rubber is the choice for the environmentally conscious.
In the case of rubber recycling, the waste rubber can go through size reduction, and the resulting powders can be melt blended with thermoplastic resins to produce thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) compounds.
As much as 28 percent of microplastics in the ocean comes from tires shedding synthetic rubber as they wear down.
Most rubber products are classified as non-hazardous materials and therefore would be non-hazardous waste.
One of the biggest limitations of natural rubber is its poor resistance to hydrocarbons, fats, oils, and greases. Contact with these substances can cause swelling, softening, or complete dissolution of the rubber part resulting in partial or complete failure.
1- Get damaged under the action of strong acid, ozone, oils, greases and fats. 2- Not recommended for use in alcohols, esters, or among the aromatic solution. 3- Low temperature properties. 4- Higher raw material prices.
They are among the most threatened forests in the world. The main threat is agriculture, as trees are cleared to make room for farms where palm oil, sugar, rice, corn and—at a dramatically increasing rate—rubber trees are grown. Forests often are cleared to make room for growing rubber trees.
The material can contain heavy metals like lead and manganese, volatile organic compounds like toluene, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The chemicals are associated with cancer and other illnesses at certain levels of exposure.