Testing plastic-free coating claims

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and manufacturer Xampla have developed a test to validate plastic-free materials.

Currently, there is no universally accepted method for verifying that a material is indeed plastic-free, despite increasing regulatory pressure to eliminate single-use plastics in the EU's Single-Use Plastics Directive (SUPD).

Xampla partnered with NPL through the institution’s Measurement for Business (M4B) programme to develop a way of verifying plastic-free claims.

The EU’s REACH regulation defines plastics as ‘polymers to which additives or other substances have been added’, and highlights that natural polymers which have not been chemically modified are not plastics.

NPL has deployed a suite of spectroscopy methods to create a chemical signature for the polymers before and after they are  processed into a coating.

These signatures are then correlated with physical and topography signatures provided by high-resolution microscopy. The results show no meaningful chemical changes, confirming that the materials are therefore not classed as 'plastic' according to the EU REACH definition, and are SUPD-exempt.

Professor Max Ryadnov NPL Fellow, comments, ‘Eventually, this work could lead to the development of standards to support plastic-free materials and processes used to manufacture them...Such standards will provide manufacturers and regulators with clear and internationally recognised benchmarks against which plastic-free claims can be verified, promoting the sustainable materials industry.’