Are Home Compostables Actually Environmentally Friendly?
This Thanksgiving, when prepping your sweet potato pie and green bean casserole, don’t toss those hearty organics into your regular trash. Send them to your compost pile or take a moment to see if your municipality offers curbside compost pickups. But something you might want to avoid are plastics and rigid packaging that claim to be “home compostable” or “biodegradable.”
Recycling food waste is an excellent environmental practice, but “compostable” or “biodegradable” plastics (usually PLA - polylactic acid) are not going to break down in your backyard bin. PLA is designed to degrade in industrial composting facilities, but not at home.
In the UK, there are many products that claim to be “home compostable,” but a recent study showed a range of issues that can confuse and mislead consumers:
♻️ Only 14% of plastic packaging items were certified “industrially compostable”
♻️ 46% of plastic packaging has no compostable certification at all (i.e. the label may read “100% biodegradable” - but this typically means it cannot be composted)
♻️ 60% of the plastics marketed as “home compostable” in the study failed to disintegrate after six months
“The bottom line is that home compostable plastics don’t work,” said Miodownik.
The study also found an estimated 10% of people effectively compost at home.
The US Federal Trade Commission establishes green marketing rules in the US and states that, to claim a product or packaging is compostable, companies need:
“competent and reliable scientific evidence that all materials…will break down into — or become part of — usable compost safely and in about the same time as the materials with which it is composted.” And marketers have to qualify compostable claims if the product can’t be composted at home safely or in a timely way.
A major issue arises when consumers place industrial compostable products in the recycling stream - causing major contamination and potentially sending full bails of recycling to the landfill.
Here are a few tips for effective composting:
♻️ When composting food waste at home, avoid using any plastic or “compostable” bag. A paper bag might be a good short-term option.
♻️ It’s OK to put some paper in your home compost - even newsprint. But avoid colored and glossy paper which can contain toxic heavy metals.
♻️ Remember that the term “biodegradable” doesn’t mean compostable. When gathering items for your industrial/curbside compost, look for the BPI Compostable certification to make sure the item can be industrially composted.
The holiday season is a good time to consider these issues. It will take just a moment for you to scan your different waste streams (landfill, recycling, and food waste). Consider starting a home compost if you don’t have one. And consider how you can cut down, what you can cut out, and how you might green your purchases.
The Uplift Agency
Uplift builds strategies, programs, and communication campaigns that advance ESG in workplaces, supply chains and communities.
We know how to navigate the road ahead because we’ve already been down it – 90 percent of our team has led environmental or social programs in corporations or nonprofits. Because ESG is all we do, our services are more comprehensive and integrated than most firms.
