Berlin, 17 October 2017 – Biodegradable plastics offer innovative solutions to improve recycling quality by facilitating the means for more efficient separate waste collection. This has been confirmed by a recent study jointly released by Corepla, the Italian Consortium for Collecting, Recycling, and Recovering Plastic Packaging, the Italian Composters Consortium (CIC), and Assobioplastiche, the Italian Bioplastic and Biodegradable and Compostable material Association. The study focused on the effects of biodegradable plastics on plastics recycling streams in Italy, where all single-use carrier bags have to be compostable (according to the European standard EN 13432) since 2011.
Analysing the quality of recycled plastics from 19 waste sorting and recycling facilities around the country, Corepla found that compostable plastics only made up 0.85% of the plastic input. Similar studies by the University of Wageningen show that there are no negative effects on the properties of recycled plastics containing starch film and PLA recyclates. Biodegradable plastics are designed to be treated in industrial composting plants. If they do enter mechanical recycling streams due to misthrows, they can easily be sorted out by available sorting technologies such as NIR (near infrared), as recent tests by the German research institute Knoten Weimar show.
Biodegradable and compostable plastics facilitate separate collection of bio-waste and help to