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Critical Review of Norms and Standards for Biodegradable Agricultural Plastics Part II: Composting

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Abstract

The critical review of norms and standards and corresponding tests to determine the compostability of biodegradable plastics, possibly applicable also to biodegradable agricultural plastics, shows that many norms concerning testing and labelling of compostable plastics have been established at the international level. Some of them are about plastic materials, some others are about products like packaging. The media and conditions of testing cover mainly the conditions designed for industrial composting facilities, and only a few concern home composting conditions. Considering that the end of life management of biodegradable agricultural plastic products will be done at the farm to reduce the management of the waste and also its cost, only a few of these norms are considered to be suitable for adaptation to cover also biodegradable agricultural plastic products. The biodegradability validation criteria under composting conditions, such as the threshold percentage of biodegradation and disintegration, the time and temperature, and the ecotoxicity, are presented for the main norms and standard testing methods. Based on these different norms and their content, a list of specs and technical requirements that could be adapted to meet farm composting conditions for agricultural compostable plastics is proposed. These requirements may be used as criteria for the establishment of a new integrative norm for agricultural compostable plastics.

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Notes

  1. Abiotic degradation may be induced by UV or thermal in dry or humid conditions, water, salt solution etc. The ASTM D6954, Tier 1, BS 8472 and ISO 4611, ISO 4892-2 Standards define the requirements for abiotic degradations as follows:

    Average molecular, weight Mw <10 000, gel fraction <5%, elongation at break ≤5% of the original value.

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Acknowledgement

The present work has been supported by the European ‘Labelling agricultural plastic waste for valorising the waste stream’, Collective research, LABELAGRIWASTE, Contract no. 516256-2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural Engineering, Agricultural University of Athens, Iera Odos 75, 11855, Athens, Greece

    Demetres Briassoulis

  2. Cemagref, Research Unit on Technology for Agro Processes, Montpellier, France

    Cyril Dejean

  3. Dipartimento PROGESA, Università di Bari, Bari, Italy

    Pietro Picuno

  4. Department of DITEC, University of Basilicata, via dell’Ateneo Lucano n.10, 85100, Potenza, Italy

    Pietro Picuno

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  1. Demetres Briassoulis
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  2. Cyril Dejean
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  3. Pietro Picuno
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Correspondence to Demetres Briassoulis or Pietro Picuno.

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Briassoulis, D., Dejean, C. & Picuno, P. Critical Review of Norms and Standards for Biodegradable Agricultural Plastics Part II: Composting. J Polym Environ 18, 364–383 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10924-010-0222-z

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