Uni­ver­sity of Ply­mouth study mis­leads on value of bio­de­grad­able and com­postable plastics

“Con­trary to what the head­lines of some news­pa­per reports pick­ing up the find­ings sug­gest, the study con­firms that only cer­ti­fied bio­de­grad­able and com­postable bags – designed to be col­lec­ted with the bio-waste and organ­ic­ally recycled in ded­ic­ated com­post­ing plants – even if mis­takenly littered in the envir­on­ment due to bad habits, have a reduced envir­on­ment­al impact”, says François de Bie, Chair­man of European Bioplastics (EUBP). ​“While no plastic bag should end up in the envir­on­ment, peri­od”, he adds, ​“at least it is clear that cer­ti­fied com­postable ones will not need dec­ades to degrade, as con­ven­tion­al plastic bags do.” The five bags chosen com­prised two oxo-degrad­able bags, one fossil non-bio­de­grad­able poly­ethyl­ene bag, one bag mar­keted as – but not proven to be – bio­de­grad­able, and only one product cer­ti­fied com­postable accord­ing to the European Norm 13432. ​“Most of the bags selec­ted are not bio­de­grad­able accord­ing to European Uni­on (EU) defin­i­tions in the first place – indeed only one product is: the com­postable bag. But the scen­ario of indus­tri­al com­post­ing, for which the item was designed, was not tested”, states Hasso von Pogrell, Man­aging Dir­ect­or of European Bioplastics. Fur­ther­more, accord­ing to EUBP, the bag defined as bio­de­grad­able was labelled as such accord­ing to the stand­ard ISO 14855, which is not a stand­ard on bio­de­grad­a­tion but merely spe­cifies a ​‘meth­od for the determ­in­a­tion of the ulti­mate aer­obic bio­de­grad­ab­il­ity of plastics, based on organ­ic com­pounds, under con­trolled con­di­tions’. There­fore, the study actu­ally high­lights the import­ance of cor­rect labelling and cer­ti­fic­a­tion and rein­forces what the EU Com­mis­sion already did with the Single use Plastic Dir­ect­ive, where oxo-degrad­able plastics have been extens­ively researched by the European Com­mis­sion and banned. Also, in said Dir­ect­ive, the bio­de­grad­ab­il­ity of plastics has been clearly defined and linked to the stand­ard EN 13432 for indus­tri­al com­post­ing, thereby acknow­ledging that indus­tri­al com­postable products have value for sep­ar­ate col­lec­tion of bio-waste and facil­it­ate organ­ic recyc­ling (com­post­ing). Con­sequently, they shall be treated in a cor­res­pond­ing facil­ity and shall pro­duce high qual­ity com­post / soil improvers accord­ing to cir­cu­lar eco­nomy prin­ciples. ​“Plastic products cer­ti­fied to be indus­tri­ally com­postable are no solu­tion for lit­ter­ing. Test­ing them as if they should be is mis­lead­ing the public’s per­cep­tion of the tech­no­logy. It cre­ates the impres­sion of the product lack­ing in per­form­ance, even though the per­form­ance in the inten­ded envir­on­ment has not been tested at all”, says Hasso von Pogrell. The dis­cus­sion about a future more cir­cu­lar eco­nomy for plastics and the top­ic lit­ter­ing has not peaked yet. A lot of dif­fer­ent actions ini­ti­ated by the European Com­mis­sion, the industry or NGOs are try­ing to lessen the impact of plastics on the envir­on­ment. Research that will shed new light on how to reduce lit­ter and plastic leak­age is cur­rently under way. Two inter­est­ing pro­jects on this mat­ter are the Plastic Leak Pro­ject and the H2020 pro­ject CLAIM. Source: European Bioplastics, press release, 20.04.2019