Normec OWS, a global leader in biodegradability and compostability testing, and B4Plastics, a Belgian biomaterials pioneer, announce the launch of a revolutionary biodegradation pre-screening platform. This innovation aims to significantly reduce testing times for biodegradable materials—addressing a major bottleneck in the sustainable materials industry and accelerating the transition to a microplastics-free future.
With a legacy of excellence in testing since 1989, Normec OWS has conducted thousands of tests on biodegradability and compostability, supporting companies worldwide in validating claims and achieving international certifications.
“Market expectations are changing,” says Sam Deconinck, Business Development Director at Normec OWS. “Beyond traditional applications like food service ware, we now see an increasing demand for testing long-life products in natural environments such as soil and seawater. The industry needs faster answers to complex questions—like where, how fast, and how completely materials will biodegrade. This new platform is our joint response to that need.”
The two innovators now joined forces to rethink biodegradability testing from the ground up. The result: a high-throughput pre-screening platform designed to generate big data, needed for B4Plastics, has carved out a unique position in the biomaterials landscape by engineering custom biodegradation rates for its bio-based products.
“There is an urgent need to measure the impact and mitigate the sources of man-made (plastic) products entering our ecosystems,” says Stefaan De Wildeman, CEO of B4Plastics. “Europe alone releases the equivalent of 600 Olympic swimming pools of microplastics into nature each year. Traditional testing methods are too slow to meet today’s sustainability demands. That’s why we committed ourselves to building a platform capable of delivering high-throughput insights.”
The newly launched platform is a dynamic evolving system designed to integrate more testing modules over time. The platform sets a new benchmark for sustainable innovation.
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