The Need of Ecotoxicity Analysis for Biodegradable Materials

When plastics are used for single-use products (e.g., packaging) or for products with a limited lifetime (bird nets, plant foils, grass nails or sapling plant pots to name a few) they may end up sooner or later as waste or litter. Since all these conventional polymers have been optimised to be stable against microbial attack and to withstand moisture, light and atmospheric O2, such waste and litter is almost inert to environmental attack. 

Incineration and landfill, as additional treatment techniques for residual waste, should be mentioned for completeness. The content of pollutants and harmful substances in residual waste is almost always determined by waste fractions other than biodegradable materials. Therefore, the established rnles for incineration and landfill cover biodegradable polymers in detail additional considerations of the ecotoxicological impact are not needed. 

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