The Future of Compostable Packaging

With all the recent buzz around sustainability, packaging and label printers and converters are looking to make more eco-friendly decisions across their production processes.

One of the most obvious places to start is with the substrates being used for the packages and labels. But what are the best options that balance the needs of the planet with packaging requirements?

Packaging Impressions spoke with Frank Franciosi, executive director of the U.S. Composting Council, to learn more about the earth-friendly options packaging and label providers have now, and what the future of compostable packaging holds.

Compostable Packaging Basics

First off, Franciosi makes it clear that “compostable” and “biodegradable” are not interchangeable when it comes to packaging — and that only “compostable” should be used in this context.

“Nuclear fuel rods are biodegradable, but it would take [more than] tens of thousands of years,” he explained via email. “‘Compostable’ is the term that you should use. Compostable is used to describe a product that can disintegrate into nontoxic, natural elements. It also does so at a rate consistent with similar organic materials. Compostable products require microorganisms, humidity, and heat to yield a finished compost product (CO₂, water, inorganic compounds, and biomass).”

There are two types of compostable packaging: bioplastic and fiber. Fiber-based packaging includes your standard paper, paperboard, and corrugated board. Meanwhile, bioplastics do contain some petroleum.

“It gets confusing, it really does,” Franciosi said in an interview. “Most of the stuff will break down in commercial facilities because they're reaching high temperatures. … The heat comes from the microorganisms breaking carbon chains, and that heat and moisture in the form of water vapor will soften the fiber, soften the bioplastic, and then eventually, the microbes will eat the fiber and eat the bioplastic.”

Determining Packaging Compostability

To be sure that packaging material is compostable, it must be tested in a lab by the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI), which evaluates how successfully the materials meet three ASTM standards: ASTM D6400, ASTM D6868, and ASTM D5338. If the BPI certifies a material, that means it breaks down at a rate consistent with other known compostable materials in composting facilities, and that it doesn’t negatively impact compost quality.

Composting sites take in a variety of materials, like food scrap and compostable packaging. | Credit: U.S. Composting Council

Additionally, Franciosi says these materials should also be field tested.

“Field testing of compostables involves evaluating their disintegration in real-world composting facilities, providing valuable data on how products perform in various conditions, and helping to ensure compost quality and support sustainable practices,” he said via email. “The Compost Manufacturing Alliance also can field test compostable products.”

Franciosi points out that most compostable packaging is used in the food space, which also has the widest range of compostable options available to packaging and label printers and converters. If you’re looking for compostable packaging to use for customers in particular verticals, the BPI offers a searchable index of packaging it has certified that includes the names and websites of companies that make them.

Compostable Packaging Challenges

One of the major issues with compostable packaging is that there is no consistency in labeling and identifying what can be sent for composting.

“If you look at some of these containers, they're really hard to decipher whether it's compostable or not because the bioplastics look very similar to regular plastic,” Franciosi said in an interview. “So, if you're at a stadium and someone brings a cup from the outside and it's plastic, they throw it in the compost bin, now you got contamination. And vice versa on the opposite side: There are times when people will take a compostable bioplastic cup and put it in recycling, so now you're contaminating that stream. Contamination's a big issue.”

Currently, compostable packaging is typically labeled with the BPI logo or another symbol that signifies it has met ASTM standards in lab tests. But that indicator is oftentimes too small to be noticed.

Ideally, Franciosi suggests all compostable packaging be one color (perhaps green), and all non-compostable packaging be some other color to make the distinction more clear. However, he recognizes that this is difficult to implement due to a lack of regulations on such a thing. To help address this, the U.S. Composting Council has partnered with the BPI and other groups to give legislators insights to guide the creation of labeling laws for compostable packaging.

Other hurdles to labeling consistency include greenwashing, as well as brand and consumer preferences.

“The problem is the consumer wants to see what they're buying; they want a clear cup, they don't want a green cup,” Franciosi said in an interview. “The worst is cutlery. Compostable cutlery is a thick bioplastic, and I've seen companies color their regular plastic green. … And then you got companies like Starbucks and McDonald's. They don't want green arches, they want golden arches. They want a white cup; they want their logo on stuff.”

Another issue with compostable packaging is what happens to it after a consumer is done with it. While there are nearly 5,000 industrial composting facilities across the United States, Franciosi says that number doesn’t tell the full story. While one facility may take all compostable products, another may accept fiber compostable products only, or food waste only. This map from the Sustainable Packaging Coalition demonstrates the stark reality of where compostable packaging is actually accepted for composting.

A composting site in Onondaga County, New York. | Credit: U.S. Composting Council

Franciosi says this points to a great need for more and bigger facilities.

“In California alone, we need another 500 facilities to handle food scrap,” he said in an interview. “In the U.S., it’s probably close to 4,000 facilities. And when I say the size of the facility matters, there's a facility in Seattle that does 150,000 tons a year. That's a huge facility. Most facilities are probably medium size [and] would be about 50,000 tons of input per year — and that would be food scrap and yard waste combined,” since combining carbon-rich yard waste with nitrogen-rich food scraps makes for more balanced compost.

To put that in perspective, the U.S. produced 82.22 million tons of packaging waste in 2018, the latest year for which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has data. Of that, 41.9 million tons was paper and paperboard packaging and 11.53 million tons was wood containers and packaging. While a good portion of these tree-derived products were recycled, the EPA has no data on whether any of these materials were composted, possibly reinforcing Franciosi’s call for more composting facilities.

Franciosi adds that increasing the number of commercial composting facilities across the country not only will make it more likely that compostable packaging will end up there, but it will also lead to more food scrap being composted.

“[Compostable packaging] is a means of moving food scraps away from landfills and into composting facilities,” Franciosi said via email. “Landfilling food scraps creates methane, a greenhouse gas that is 75 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The EPA has landfills as No. 3 on the list of methane emitters. [Food waste nonprofit] ReFED estimates that there are about 11.7 million metric tons of food scraps generated annually in the U.S. If this was diverted to centralized composting facilities, it would reduce 8.48 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents while creating 12,100 jobs.”

Future of Compostable Packaging

While there are several compostable packaging materials on the market, more are in the works. According to Franciosi, one promising bioplastic that experts are developing is called polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA). PHAs, he explains, are created through the microbial fermentation of resources such as plant sugars and vegetable oils.

“It's a microbe-created product, so it's biological in itself,” Franciosi said in an interview. “There's no synthetic plastics that are in that.”

In terms of the composting industry itself, Franciosi foresees more legislation on compostable products being passed in the coming years.

“I see more state regulations regarding the labeling and identification of compostable products. Washington, California, and Colorado all have these in place,” he said via email. “Eventually, this will lead to a national law. Some of these have already been proposed in Congress last year.”

When it comes down to it, Franciosi has two pieces of advice for packaging and label printers and converters: No. 1, visit a composting facility to see how compostable packaging and other compostable products are handled; and No. 2, reframe your thinking on compostable products. 

“[People] look at composting as the end-of-life solution for packaging, and they should look at it as the ‘beginning-of-life’ solution, because it all starts in the soil and that's where it winds up,” Franciosi said in an interview. “They're not thinking that way, so there's a whole different paradigm shift that they have to think about.”