What are biodegradable materials?

Special Committee on Degradable Plastics: Biodegradable materials include biodegradable natural polymer materials such as cellulose, starch, paper, etc., as well as biodegradable plastics obtained by biosynthesis or chemical synthesis.

Biodegradable plastics refer to the degradation caused by the action of microorganisms existing in nature under natural conditions such as soil and/or sandy soil, and/or specific conditions such as composting conditions or anaerobic digestion conditions or aqueous culture solutions, and The final complete degradation becomes carbon dioxide (CO2) or/and methane (CH4), water (H2O) and mineralized inorganic salts of the elements it contains, and new biomass (such as dead microorganisms, etc.).

It should be noted that each biodegradable material, including paper, etc., requires certain environmental conditions for its degradation. If there are no degradation conditions, especially microbial living conditions, the degradation will be very slow; at the same time, not every Biodegradable materials degrade rapidly under any environmental conditions. Therefore, when dealing with biodegradable materials, we should proceed from its environmental conditions and analyze the material itself to determine whether it is a biodegradable material. How to judge whether a material is biodegradable? Both the world and China have issued a series of test method standards, which are answered in the standard question.