Plast

This document specifies guidance for the development of standards and specifications covering plastics waste recovery, including recycling. The document establishes the different options for the recovery of plastics waste arising from post-industrial and post-consumer sources as illustrated diagrammatically in Annex A. Consequently, the process stages, steps, and terminology presented in this document are intended to be of general applicability presented in Annex B.

This document specifies a laboratory method for the extraction of microplastics from compost matrices originating from industrial or home composting. The method outlines various extraction steps assuring polymer stability, and high recovery rate. This extraction process separates microplastics from the compost matrix that can be further analysed either by number-based or by mass-based techniques.

The method is applicable for microplastics up to 1 mm in size.

The method is applicable for microplastics with densities lower than 1,4 g/cm3.

This document will not specify downstream detection methods for the identification and quantification.

The method in this document has not been validated for microplastic extraction from other matrices, except for composts.

This document defines methods that measure amounts of bacterial cells or a marker gene DNA to obtain the total abundance in environmental aqueous samples, such as seawater and river water, for biodegradability assessment. Amounts of a marker gene DNA enable to give a prediction of abundance of bacterial cells by using a conversion factor such as average number of the marker gene homologues in a bacterial cell. The methods could be also applicable to aqueous samples artificially enriched with bacterial cells released from environmental sediments. In addition, this document is applicable to solution with bacteria extracted from environmental sediments and plastic surfaces, where appropriate pre-treatment might be defined elsewhere. In the document, the method provides measurement of prokaryotic bacterial cells, though eukaryotic microorganisms are out of scope.

NOTE   Eukaryotic microorganisms, especially fungi, are well known to be primary decomposers in land, but the role in hydrosphere has been less documented and is largely unknown yet. Actually, the proportion of fungi in the ocean whole microbial metagenome has been reported as low (fungal reads make up 1,4 % to 2,9 % [2]).

This document provides guidance for testing the adhesion of coatings on plastics, plastics composites and similar substrates. An overview of common test methods is provided.

This document provides information for the determination of the film thickness of coatings on plastics, plastic composites and similar substrates. An overview of common test methods for determination of wet-film thickness and dry-film thickness is provided.