A hot-button societal issue: Biodegradation studies (soil burial test) of grocery shopping bags

Biodegradation is one of the expectations from the consumers of today whenever they seek environmental friendly products. This expectation is intensified for the products with short span of life, such as shopping bags. To date there are no studies available that report on evaluating the biodegradability of different types of shopping bags using the same platform. This knowledge gap is addressed in this research work, which reports the biodegradability study using the soil burial test conducted for different types of shopping bags used for grocery purposes. Six types of shopping bags, made out of different raw materials, were tested by the soil burial test. Weight loss, reduction in tensile strength and changes in microscopic appearance after the test period of soil burial are reported in this paper. According to the test results, paper bag recorded maximum biodegradation followed by cotton bags.