In order to make bioplastics accessible for a wider spectrum of applications, ready-to-use plastic material formulations should be available with tailored properties. Ideally, these kinds of materials should also be “home-compostable” to simplify their organic recycling. Therefore, materials based on PLA (polylactid acid) and PHB (polyhydroxybutyrate) blends are presented which contain suitable additives, and some of them contain also thermoplastic starch as a filler, which decreases the price of the final compound. They are intended for various applications, as documented by products made out of them. The produced materials are fully biodegradable under industrial composting conditions. Surprisingly, some of the materials, even those which contain more PLA than PHB, are also fully biodegradable under home-composting conditions within a period of about six months. Experiments made under laboratory conditions were supported with data obtained from a kitchen waste pilot composter and from municipal composting plant experiments. Material properties, environmental conditions, and microbiology data were recorded during some of these experiments to document the biodegradation process and changes on the surface and inside the materials on a molecular level.

According to Directive (EU) 2019/904 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 June 2019, single-use plastic cutlery, cotton buds, straws and stirrers will be banned in the member states of EU from summer 2021 onwards. Many of them are being replaced by compostable products. The aim of...

Municipalities in Slovakia have a duty to separate biodegradable municipal waste (BDMW) from family houses. This duty can be achieved by home composting or by collection of green waste in bio-bins, which are regularly emptied by a collection company. Collected waste is recycled in a composting...

Water stress is an indicator that plant are suffering from drought. For optimization of the crop production is necessary to indicate physiological changes, those can be represented by stem expansion or shrinkage and sap flow rate. We used the Dynagage SGA5-WS (Dynamax) sensors for the sap flow...

The main problems of the city of Nitra (Slovak Republic) in the field of municipal waste management include: 1. High production of municipal waste per capita; 2. Low rate of its separation; 3. High landfill rate; 4. No opportunity for composting; 5. Establishment of illegal landfills in the city; 6. Low waste prevention rate. To identify the attitudes and opinions of the respondents, and to evaluate certain behavioural practices of the inhabitants of Nitra in the management of municipal solid waste, we used a structured questionnaire (realized in 2020). The results of the questionnaire correspond to the behaviour of 4911 inhabitants of the city (6.46%). This paper evaluates the respondents’ answers, which could be utilised by the local government—not only for a more appropriate setting of municipal waste management and separation, but also in waste prevention and monitoring changes in the consumer behaviour of city residents. The degree of separation in individual housing construction (IHC) and complex housing construction (CHC) was statistically evaluated and compared separately. For paper and glass, a higher degree of separation was reflected in CHC; while conversely, households living in CHC avoided bio-waste and kitchen waste more than IHC households. The most common reason for not participating in the separate collection was the lack of collection containers, the distance of containers from their households, or the low frequency of their collection. The results of the questionnaire show the need for more rigorous education about waste generation, its proper separation, and its prevention.