Influence of Home Composting on Tensile Properties of Commercial Biodegradable Plastic Films.

In recent years biodegradable plastic films have been increasingly used for various purposes, most often as grocery bags and for collecting bio-waste. Typically, the biodegradation of these films should take place in industrial compost facilities where the biodegradation process occurs under controlled conditions. Nevertheless, many of these films are often disposed of in home composting bins, so the aim of this study was to examine the course of biodegradation of compostable plastic films under uncontrolled conditions in garden composting sites during a period of four months. Mechanical properties were tested on seven different commercially available biodegradable films and bags that were placed in a garden composting bin from February to May. Both tensile properties and tensile-impact strength showed some unexpected results in terms of increase of the properties after the first, second, and third month for some films and bags. The same unpredictability was seen in FTIR and TG analyses.