Physical characteristics of biodegradable pots from empty fruit bunches (EFB) and sawdust waste as planting media

Biodegradable pots are biodegradable planting media as a substitute for polybags. Polybags are a medium used for plant seeds, polybags are made of polyethylene. The use of polybags causes environmental problems because when the plant seeds are large, the seeds will be moved to the soil and the polybags will be thrown away into the environment as waste that is difficult to decompose, polybags take a long time to decompose, so an innovation is needed in the form of biodegradable pots, namely planting media as a substitute for polybags. Biodegradable pots are made from biomass materials so they are easy to decompose and can reduce the presence of polybag waste in nature. In this study, researchers made biodegradable pots from empty fruit bunches (EFB) and sawdust waste. The composition of EFB and sawdust waste was varied to obtain the best formulation as a medium for plant seed growth. To identify the quality of biodegradable pots, their characteristics will include analysis of density, water content, water absorption, biodegradation and FTIR. Analysis of biodegradable pots shows that increasing the composition of sawdust and decreasing the composition of EFB causes the density value to decrease because it has fine and light particles. The percentage of water content and absorption capacity of biodegradable pots increased because sawdust has high porosity and large surface area. The percentage of biodegradation decreased because of the dense structure of sawdust and high lignin content. FTIR analysis showed that biodegradable pots have various functional groups of organic materials that form biodegradable pots. The resulting biodegradable pots can be used as a medium for growing plant seeds and are easily decomposed in nature.