Perhaps surprisingly, the effect of temperature is often greater than the effect of UV exposure. This can be seen in terms of the Arrhenius equation, which shows that reaction rates have an exponential dependence on temperature. By comparison the dependence of degradation rate on UV exposure and the availability of oxygen is broadly linear. As the oceans are cooler than land plastic pollution in the marine environment degrades more slowly. Materials buried in landfill do not degrade by photo-oxidation at all, though they may gradually decay by other processes.
Mechanical stress can effect the rate of photo-oxidation and may also accelerate the physical breakup of plastic objects. Stress can be caused by mechanical load (tensile and shear stresses) or even by temperature cycling, particularly in composite systems consisting of materials with differing temperature coefficients of expansion. Similarly, sudden rainfall can cause thermal stress.