ANALYTICAL RESULTS OF 2 EXPERIMENTAL METHODS TO DETERMINE THE ABILITYOF COUPLED MATERIALS AND PAPERBOARD TO DEGRADE IN THE ENVIRONMENT

The increasing use of packaging materials poses the problem of their e nvironmental impact when their period of use finishes and they become waste. New methods of preservation, distribution and consumption of fo od products require ever more sophisticated packaging. This type of pa ckaging is often done with coupled materials: polyethylene, paperboard and aluminium. This study analyses paperboard and coupled materials i n terms of their ability to biodegrade on burial, in Soil Burial Tests , and in aqueous solutions. in Modified Sturm Tests to measure the int rinsic biodegradability and, then, the behaviour of the same samples w hen buried in soil (Soil Burial Test). The tests in aqueous solution u sed inoculum from urban waste water treatment sludge and lasted 56 day s. The burial tests used soil taken from a solid urban waste landfill in the City of Rome. The tests lasted 24 months.