Glossary

Biodegradable Material

They are organic in nature and they degrade for microbial action, enzymatic or for other biological action in simple compost like: water and carbonic anhydride. It is not necessary that the biodegradation happens in a certain weary of time and the final products of the biodegradation are not considered.

Compostable Material

They biodegrade in presence of micro-organisms, heat and damp and they are disintegrated in environment of industrial compost under conditions of standard test in order to form a mixture that sustains the vegetable life. Some biodegradable materials degrade only under the conditions tightly checked of industrial unity of compost while others relatively degrade under the colder conditions of a heap of domestic compost.

Renewable

It refers to materials that can be renewed or replaced. The materials from products of organic plants as the Naturflex are renewable because the crops or the trees are planted in substitution of those crops.

Sustainable

It refers to a system or a practice that satisfies the actual demands without exhausting the future resources. The sustainable materials are those products through the conservative use of the resources, producing at the same time, during their life, the smaller quantity of possible issues.

Food contact certification

It attests the appointment towards the safety and the food hygiene:

• confers the safety characteristics required by consumers, retailer and buyers within the food industry
• it is based on the standards and on the international lines driven by the Codex Alimentarius and by other national standards
• the periodic evaluations constantly allow to check the own safety system and food hygiene

Ecology

From the Greek: οίκος, oikos "house" or also "environment"; and λόγος, logos, "speech" or "study" it is the jaw of the natural sciences that studies the ecosphere or rather the portion of the Earth in which life is present in united systems called "ecosystems", whose characteristics are determined by the interaction of the organisms among them and with the surrounding environment or still portions of the ecosphere same. The ecology represents the link between the sciences of the Earth and the sciences of the life.

Packaging

For the legal normative and Italian regulation, it is the product, composed of materials of any nature, turned to contain and to protect certain commodities, from the first subjects to the ended products, to allow their manipulation and their delivery the producer to the consumer or to the user, and to assure their presentation, as well as the articles to lose used to the same purpose (art. 35, lett. to), ex legislative decree 22/97, now art. 218 of the decree legislative 3 April 2006, n. 152 bringing Norms in environmental subject.) According to the classification brought in the same decree, in Italy packaging are separate in three typologies or functional categories: primary packaging (for the sale), secondary packaging (multiple), tertiary packaging (for the transport).

The packing must respect a series of objectives, for example: to protect the commodity, to avoid thefts, to be economic, and to respect an equilibrium between performances and costs, both from the point of view of the material used and of the time needed for realizing the operation of packing. From the ecological point of view it is important that for packing is used material easily recyclable and in the smaller possible quantity.