• ASTM D6400 specifies the characteristics of compostable plastics.
• ASTM D6852 and ASTM D7075 were standards developed specifically for characterization of biobased products but these standards have already been withdrawn.

Aside from ASTM D6866, the ASTM Technical Committee D20.96 is also responsible for three other standards relevant to the biobased industry – ASTM D6400, D6852 and D7075.

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ISO/IEC 17025:2017-accredited Beta Analytic provides exclusively ASTM D6866 testing.

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ASTM D6400 for Compostable Plastics

The ASTM D6400 standard is relevant to plastic makers who want to label their products as “compostable in municipal and industrial composting facilities.” The standard specifies the properties a plastic product must have for it to be considered as compostable.

According to ASTM D6400, plastics and the products made from them are compostable if they biodegrade at a rate comparable to known compostable materials. The standard has also taken into account the quality of the compost produced from the plastics.

This standard can be downloaded from the ASTM website for a fee.

ASTM D6852 (Withdrawn in 2011)

ASTM D6852 was developed in 2002 as a guide for biobased product makers who want to characterize their products in terms of biobased content, total resources consumption (raw materials and energy), and environmental profile, which covers the emissions and waste generated by the product in all stages of its life. This was a standard that aimed to help a company determine their products’ carbon footprint.

ASTM D7075 (Withdrawn in 2013)

ASTM D7075 looks into all stages of a biobased product’s life – from raw materials to post-consumer waste management – to determine its impact to the environment. The standard takes a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach in evaluating a product’s environmental performance and describes the standard practice in reporting LCA results.

Is your product biobased? Prove it!

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Beta Analytic: ASTM D6866 Lab

Based in Miami, Florida, Beta Analytic’s ISO/IEC 17025:2017-accredited lab provides ASTM D6866 testing. The company’s radiocarbon dating lab is able to determine the biobased content of a product by measuring the radiocarbon, or carbon 14, content of a material. Materials from renewable sources still have carbon 14 whereas those of fossil origin no longer have this weakly radioactive carbon isotope. The correlation between biobased content and amount of carbon 14 present in a material makes it possible for ASTM D6866 to determine the exact percentage of a product that is biomass.

Page last updated: August 2018