A biodegradable plastic is a material that, when buried in underground, etc., gets dissociated biologically due to bacteria or microorganisms.
This characteristic of such plastics can be considered to be ideal from the point of view of protecting the environment as compared to plastics based on petroleum.

The development of biodegradable plastic materials having the properties needed in the industry such as transparency, heat resistance, etc., is progressing rapidly. These are being more and more widely used in electrical home appliances, components for OA equipment, food containers, interior decoration parts of automobiles, etc.

In the Aichi Expo held in March 2005 (Aichi World Expo), biodegradable plastics were used in various ways. For example, the food utensils used in the restaurants were all made of biodegradable plastics. Large PC manufacturers have also announced that they will be using biodegradable plastics for the components in a PC, and the demand for biodegradable plastics is considered to increase rapidly from now on in view of the laws on environmental protection and recycling.
In the field of automobile interior decoration parts, Toyota Motor Company has announced that they will be using poly-lactic acid products in successive stages.

The following materials are the major biodegradable plastics.
The manufacturers of the material are given within parentheses ( ).

• Poly-lactic acid (Nature Works, Mitsui Chemicals, Unitika, Toyobo, Dai Nippon Ink Chemicals, Toyota Motor Company, and others)
• Poly-butylene succinate (Mitsubishi Chemicals, Showa Polymers)
• Poly-ethylene succinate (Nippon Catalysts)
• Polyvinyl alcohol (Kuraray, Nihon Synthetic Chemical Industries)
• Poly-glycolic acid (Kureha Chemicals)
• Cellulose acetate (Daicel Chemical Industries)