Environmental Fate and Ecotoxicity Assessment of Biodegradable Polymers

Environmental Fate and Ecotoxicity Assessment of Biodegradable Polymers 

Fernanda Farachi, Giulia Bettas Ardisson and Francesco Degli Innocent  

Over the last 20 years, biodegradable polymers have been developed and designed for applications that gain an important advantage from biodegradation. 

Biodegradable polymers are also used in agricultural plastic items which are designed to be left and biodegraded in the field after their use. The biodegradation of plastics in soil is defined by Norme Fran aise (NF) (French standard), U 52-001 [5], which regulates mulch films used in agriculture and horticulture, and by two Ente Nationale 

Italiano di Unificazione (Italian standards) UNI 11462 [6] and UNI 11495 [7], Additionally, a certification scheme for biodegradation in soil has been developed by the Certification Institnte Vingotte (Brnssels, Belgium) [8], in order to respond to the market need for a workable definition of plastics which are biodegradable in soil. 

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