ABSTRACT
In striving for a sustainable society, polymers with well-defined lifetimes are required. The focus of the 1930s on materials that were so much better than natural materials in the sense of their lifetime, shifted in the early 1980s to polymers that were biodegradable. The first environmental approach was taken when the oil crisis of the 1970s initiated development of materials filled with what is now called renewable polymers (e.g., starch). In some respect we are now closing the loop. This chapter will give an expose of biodegradation of polymers in a historical perspective. It also summarizes recent biodegradable polymers relative to chemical, physical, and degradation behavior.
