Issue 03/2016

News
daily upated news at
www.bioplasticsmagazine.com
DIN CERTCO first certification body to include
newest French compostability standard
DIN CERTCO is once again leading the way with NF T 51-800 - certification of home compostable products.
‘We open the door for your market acceptance in France’.
For the past several years, DIN CERTCO has engaged in the conformity assessment of plastic products
made of compostable materials suitable for home composting. These products may then be granted DIN-
Geprüft [DIN-tested] home compostable accreditation and licensed to bear the DIN-Geprüft conformity
mark.
In June 2015, DIN CERTCO became the first certification organization in the world to extend the range
of biobased certification standards to include the International Standard series ISO 16620, which was
released in April 2015:
Now, the organization has done it again: in addition to the well-known Australian Standard AS 5810, it
recently became the first certification body in the world to add the new French standard NF T 51-800 to its
certification scheme.
DIN CERTCO has now extended the range of home compostable standards with the French Standard NF T
51-800 released in November 2015: the NF T 51-800:2015-11: Plastics – Specifications for plastics suitable
for home composting. According to this standard, materials, intermediates and end-consumer products
can now be certified. In France, even single-use carrier bags with wall thicknesses of less than 50 µm
are required to comply with this standard from July 1 st 2016.
All certification schemes and other relevant documents can be found at the website. KL
www.dincertco.de
Silk coating keeps fruit fresh without refrigeration
Half of the world’s fruit and vegetable crops are lost during the food supply chain, due mostly to premature deterioration of
these perishable foods, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
Tufts University (USA) biomedical engineers have demonstrated that fruits can stay fresh for more than a week without
refrigeration if they are coated in an odorless, biocompatible silk solution so thin as to be virtually invisible. The approach is a
promising alternative for preservation of delicate foods using a naturally derived material and a water-based manufacturing
process. (The work is reported in the May 6 issue of Scientific Reports.)
Silk’s unique crystalline structure makes it one of nature’s toughest materials. Fibroin, an insoluble protein found in silk, has
a remarkable ability to stabilize and protect other materials while being fully biocompatible and biodegradable.
For the study, researchers dipped freshly picked strawberries in a solution of 1 % silk fibroin protein; the coating process was
repeated up to four times. The silk fibroin-coated fruits were then treated for varying amounts of time with water vapor under
vacuum (water annealed) to create varying percentages of crystalline beta-sheets in the coating. The longer the exposure, the
higher the percentage of beta-sheets and the more robust the fibroin coating. The coating was 27 to 35 µm thick.
The strawberries were then stored at room temperature. Uncoated berries were compared over time with berries dipped in
varying numbers of coats of silk that had been annealed for different periods of time. At seven days, the berries coated with the
higher beta-sheet silk were still juicy and firm while the uncoated berries were dehydrated and discolored.
Tests showed that the silk coating prolonged the freshness of the fruits by
slowing fruit respiration, extending fruit firmness and preventing decay.
Similar experiments were performed on bananas, which, unlike strawberries,
are able to ripen after they are harvested. The silk coating decreased the
bananas’ ripening rate compared with uncoated controls and added firmness to
the fruit by preventing softening of the peel. The thin, odorless silk coating did
not affect fruit texture. Taste was not studied.
“Various therapeutic agents could be easily added to the water-based silk
solution used for the coatings, so we could potentially both preserve and
add therapeutic function to consumable goods without the need for complex
chemistries,” said the study’s first author, Benedetto Marelli, Ph.D. (MIT). KL/MT
source: http://bit.ly/1symr2h
6 bioplastics MAGAZINE [03/16] Vol. 11