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RESULT

Table 1

Label Total reactor Plastic initial Plastic final Plastic


weight (g) weight (g) weight (g) Deterioration Average
A B C = [(A-B)/A]
x 100
NP 1 70 0.0300 0.0318 -6
NP 2 69 0.0312 0.0323 -3.53 -3.49
NP 3 69 0.0318 0.0315 -0.94
BP 1 70 0.0555 0.0520 6.31
BP 2 71 0.0504 0.0488 3.17 3.36
BP 3 70 0.0586 0.0550 0.61

7.00

6.00
Percentage of degradation, %

5.00

4.00

3.00

2.00

1.00

0.00
Non biodegradable Biodegradable
Plastic Samples

Graph 1: Percentage of Degradation (%) vs Plastic Samples

Table 2: Standard deviation for non-biodegradable and biodegradable plastic

Plastic Sample Standard Deviation

Non-biodegradable plastic 0.00


Biodegradable plastic 2.85
DISCUSSION

This experiment was run to determine the degree of disintegration of normal and
biodegradable plastics material when exposed to composting environment. In this experiment
two types of plastic bags were used which are non-biodegradable plastic and biodegradable
plastics. Biodegradable plastic is plastic which made from all natural plant materials and it’s
naturally decomposes in the environment. The basic different between these two types of
plastics is biodegradable will break down naturally while normal plastic will not decompose
naturally. Large number of non-biodegradable waste will lead to excessive waste that has a
great potential to damage the environment.

The plastic bags (non-biodegradable and biodegradable) were cut into squares (2cm x
2cm) before it was washed and dried in the oven at 80℃ for half an hour. On the other side, a
small hole about 0.5mm diameter is made on 100mL plastic container. The reason of making
the hole is to allow air circulation for composting the plastics. The smaller the hole, the better
it will work because it can prevent compost from oozing out (Holland, 2019). Composting is
an aerobic process, which makes air as important role to ensure the effectiveness of
decomposition. Both plastics were put in the different plastic container to be incubated. It will
be incubated at 52℃ for 45days. The presence of heat will help the composting process to be
easier (Woodford, 2019). The reactor was weighted and the weight loss will be replaced with
the same amount of moisture because presence of moisture also can help the process of
composting (Woodford, 2019).

Table 1 shows the result of initial and final weight of both plastics. The final weights
of non-biodegradable plastic are 0.0318g, 0.0323g and 0.0315g which are higher than the
initial weight, 0.0300g, 00.0312g and 0.0318g. The difference between both weights has
caused the average value to be 0. This happened because the plastic (non-biodegradable) is
not fully decomposed or breaks down. Plastic waste takes a long period about 10-1000 years
to decompose (Leblanc, 2019). The plastic bags are made of ethylene which has that
produced as a by-product of oil, gas and coal production this caused the plastic bag hard to
decompose. The initial weights for biodegradable plastic are 0.0520g, 0.0488g and 0.0550g
which are higher than the final weight, 0.0555g, 0.0504g and 0.0586g. Biodegradable
plastics take three to six months to fully decompose (Serle, nd). This is because
biodegradable plastics were made from traditional petrochemical that has been designed by
engineer so that it can be easily break down. It also contained additives that cause them to
decay quickly in the presence of light, oxygen, moisture and heat (Woodford, 2019). Graph 1
also shows the percentage of biodegradation for biodegradable is higher than non-
biodegradable.

Standard deviation is used to measure the spread of a data distribution. It measures the
typical distance between each data point and the mean. From Table 2, the result shows the
standard deviation for both non-biodegradable and biodegradable plastics. Since the average
value of the non-biodegradable plastic is zero, the standard deviation value of the non-
biodegradable is also affected. It can be seen that the standard deviation value of
biodegradable is quite higher than the non-biodegradable plastic due to the composting of the
biodegradable plastics is better than the non-biodegradable plastics. Standard deviation value
was calculated because the compositional data should be transformed to any statistical
analysis like standard deviation (Edjabou et al, 2017)
REFERENCES

Essonanawe, M. (2017). Statistical analysis of solid waste composition data : Arithmetic


mean , standard deviation and correlation coefficients. Waste Management, 2-11.

Mohee, R. a. (2007). Determining biodegradability of plastic materials under controlled and


natural composting environments. Science Direct , 1486-1493.

Bioplastics and biodegradable plastics - How do they work? Retrieved from


https://www.explainthatstuff.com/bioplastics.html

Serle, J. (2019). How long do biodegradable bags take to decompose?. Retrieved from
https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/how-long-do-biodegradable-bags-take-to-decompose/

How to Make a Compost Bin From a Plastic Storage Container


https://dengarden.com/gardening/How-to-Make-a-Compost-Bin-from-a-Plastic-Storage-
Container

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