Normec OWS services

Different kinds of man-made material can end up in soil either through unintended or intended use. Mulch film, plant pots, fertilizer coating, and body bags, for example, are purposeful products for which biodegradability offers big benefits. Normec OWS offers different types of soil degradation testing to determine the (bio)degradation, chemical characteristics, and ecotoxicity of materials in accordance with the available standards.

Specific consumer products, such as detergents or flushable wipes and refills, can inevitably end up in a fresh water environment. Biodegradability of these products helps to prevent any kind of damage to the ecosystem. Normec OWS offers different types of fresh water degradation testing to determine the degradation and chemical characteristics of materials in accordance with the available standards.

Normec OWS’s services also include performing administrative and technical audits on waste streams, treatment processes, and installations. The main purpose of these activities is to give precise insight into the actual composition of waste streams. This is done to verify the amount of waste, for example, or to determine the degree of contamination in waste streams for recycling or composting.

Normec OWS offers on-site litter monitoring services. This is an accurate and objective way of determining the amount and composition of litter found across a specific geographical area of any size. We perform litter monitoring across large municipal areas, for example, to determine the effectiveness of litter-reducing measures taken by government or industry.

Normec OWS performs sorting analyses to monitor the purity of various industrial and domestic waste streams. These include household waste, organic waste, municipal litter, industrial waste, electronic waste, and construction and demolition waste. Our sorting analyses provide insight into the exact composition and amount of all kinds of material found in these different waste streams. These analyses help to optimize quality control of different collection systems of various waste streams.

At Normec OWS, we perform Carbon Footprint (CFP) studies as an application of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology that focuses specifically on the climate change impact category. While an LCA analyses the impact of a product or service on various (environmental) impact categories, a CFP study determines specifically the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated at product or service level.

The chemical characteristics of a product or material determine how safe it is. Most important in this respect are the heavy metals and fluorine, as these can have a negative effect on the environment. Normec OWS offers heavy metals and fluorine testing as a standalone service and also as a standard part of composting and certification testing. We can test for 11 different kinds of heavy metal and fluor.

Biobased carbon testing is a specific method used to determine the amount of carbon in a product that is derived from biomass, as opposed to non-circular and/or fossil origin. While this can be used to gain insight into the natural, renewable resources used in a product, it is no indicator of biodegradability. Biobased carbon is not necessarily biodegradable, just as biodegradable carbon
is not necessarily biobased.