Irish researchers develop bio-plastic blend that can compost in 60 days

In Ireland, scientists at BEACON Bioeconomy Research Centre, the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) funded Research Centre at University College Dublin, and AMBER, the SFI Research Centre for materials science at Trinity College Dublin, have discovered a blend of biodegradable plastic that completely degrades under typical home-composting conditions. The team blended 15 different biodegradable plastics together so they could function as commercial plastics but which could be composted at home.

They discovered that mixing Polylactic acid (PLA), one of the best-selling biodegradable plastics on the market but which is not home-compostable, with polycaprolactone (PCL) created a material that degraded completely within 60 days under typical home-composting conditions. They also found that these biodegradable plastics could be fed to anaerobic digesters to produce biogas.