Harmonised standards for bioplastics

Standardisation is an effort of industrial stakeholders to define criteria for the description of products and services. The idea is to ease the competition and the commercial growth by overcoming barriers that result from unclear or incompatible specifications. The use of standards is voluntary, which means that it is within the sovereignty of a company to seek the compliance with a standard or not. In the latter case, however, it is not allowed to make the reference to the standard.

Certain European standards are called harmonised standards. This means that the European Commission mandated the European Standardisation Organisation CEN to elaborate the content of the standard.

Standards specify for example how measurements of biodegradability or renewability of a given material need to be made, or which criteria need to be fulfilled. A product or service that fulfils these requirements can legitimately claim compliance to the specific standard.
European Bioplastics strongly recommends having the comformity to a standard verified by an independent body that issues according certificates and corresponding labels.

More information on certification and labels can be found here. A comprehensive overview of all relevant standards and labels for bioplastics can be found in our fact sheet.

Biobased
The standard “CEN/TS 16137:2011 Plastics – Determination of biobased carbon content” from the European Committee for Standardization (CEN), specifies the calculation method for determining the biobased carbon content in monomers, polymers