Worldwide Biodegradation Standards

This chapter describes the worldwide biodegradation standards for biodegradable plastics, including starch-based plastics, in common disposal environments, including compost, marine, anaerobic digestion, soil, and landfill. Compost environments include aerobic conditions within hot industrial compost environments. Marine environments include cold aerobic conditions. Landfill disposal environments include aerobic and anaerobic conditions. Anaerobic-digestion environments include hot anaerobic conditions. 

Biodegradation standards are provided in the following sections. The standards are organized based on disposal environment. Thus, the biodegradation standards from different worldwide standards organizations are presented in an industrial compost section, marine environment section, an anaerobic-digestion section, landfill section, and home compost section. 

To prove the ultimate biodegradability of a biodegradable polymer and that there is no adverse effect on the user or the environment, as well as to successfully market a plastic material as biodegradable, there are international standards in place according to which these materials can be certified. Both Ecoflex and Ecovio are certified worldwide as compostable and are approved for contact with food. 

One of the most important quality characteristics of advanced oxidation processes is their ability to reduce the toxicity of an industrial wastewater and to enhance its biodegradability (see Chapter 7.1.5). This criterion can be established by several standardized procedures using different test organisms ranging from microbes to intact animals (cf Tab. 5-1). An easy to perform variant is the bioluminescence assay that uses the inhibition of the bioluminescence intensity of the test organism Vibrio fischeri in the presence of toxic substrates. This is a bioassay used worldwide for the evaluation of toxicity data of individual chemicals or of industrial wastewaters (Froehner et al, 2000, DIN, 1991). Commercial systems are... 

Although a standard worldwide definition for biodegradable plastics has not been established, the definitions already in place (ASTM, CEN, ISO) correlate the degradability of a material to a specific disposal environment and to a specific standard test method. The method must simulate such an environment for a time-span that determines the material classification. 

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