What packaging is compostable? It's complicated

Compostable is the new organic.

It's a word increasingly showing up on food and beverage packaging.

Disposable cups, take-out containers, throw-away cutlery and potato chip bags emblazoned with the word are trickling into restaurants, grocery stores and coffee shops.

It means the material in question will biodegrade or break down into compost, a valuable, mulchlike material that gardeners use to improve soil and stop weed growth.

But, in an age of businesses eager to promote an eco-friendly image, the definition of compostable is changing quickly and causing widespread confusion.

If you think you can throw all compostable products in your backyard compost, think again.

Some compostable products will break down easily only if they make it to a commercial composting facility.

Others won't break down at all because they simply aren't made of the right materials, said Steve Mojo, the executive director of the New York-based Biodegradable Products Institute, which runs a national program that certifies compostables.

"There are many people out there that make claims that are, frankly, misleading," Mojo said.

Even legitimately compostable packaging materials can be perplexing to consumers because many of them look exactly like traditional plastic products.

In much of the new compostable packaging, traditional plastics are replaced with similar looking, but biodegradable, corn-based plastics.

And, some corn-based plastics have No. 7 recycling symbols printed on them. But they shouldn't go into your recycle bin with your soda bottles.

Confused?

You are not alone.

Avoiding the landfill

Compostable packaging is particularly hot right now in the Northwest thanks to a flurry of new laws banning expanded polystyrene foam, commonly referred to as Styrofoam.

Expanded polystyrene foam is a petroleum product. It is reviled by environmentalists because it does not biodegrade. It breaks into tinier and tinier pieces in landfills and at sea.

Compostable packaging, however, does break down and doesn't have to be trucked to a landfill for disposal.

In Snohomish County, that means trading a 300-mile rail trip to the Roosevelt Regional Landfill in Eastern Washington for a quick jaunt to Cedar Grove Composting in Everett.

In Seattle, composting is the law.

Not only did the city ban the use of expanded polystyrene foam in food service businesses in 2009, it also made it illegal, as of July, for those businesses to use anything but compostable or recyclable one-time-use containers.

Businesses with dining areas must collect compostable and recyclable packaging and send it to the appropriate facilities.

The city of Edmonds is considering a similar law.

Issaquah will start enforcing a foam ban in October.

Almost all the compostable food service packaging generated in Seattle goes to Cedar Grove Composting in Maple Valley in King County.

Cedar Grove, the region's largest composter, also operates a 26-acre plant on Smith Island in north Everett.

The privately owned, Seattle-based company has gained notoriety in recent years for complaints about odors coming from both its operations. But there's more going on at Cedar Grove than a public relations nightmare.

Cedar Grove, which composts 350,000 tons of residential and commercial yard and food waste every year, has strategically positioned itself at the center of the national compostable-packaging movement.

Real-life testing

Since 2004, Cedar Grove's Everett location has been testing compostable packaging. In the beginning, it focused mostly on compostable bags that businesses and consumers were using to throw away kitchen scraps.

Soon, however, manufacturers of food service packaging and take-out containers began to approach the company for its compostable seal of approval.

By 2008, Cedar Grove had become so inundated with requests that it hired a biodegradable technical specialist.

In the past six years, Cedar Grove has tested more than 1,600 compostable products. About 700 have been approved.

That means many of the products just aren't practical for composting at Cedar Grove, one of the largest and most technologically advanced facilities of its kind.

Failed materials could take months or years, rather than weeks, to break down. And that's not fast enough for Cedar Grove and other operations like it, said Susan Thoman, Cedar Grove's director of corporate business development.

Though somewhat reluctant to get into product compostability testing, Cedar Grove almost didn't have a choice.

"We knew the tidal wave of change was going to come," Thoman said. "We thought collaborating was a better move, rather than simply ignoring it. Our customers want to compost whatever they can."

Usually, companies that come to Cedar Grove for product testing have already had their products proven in a lab to be compostable. Some are certified as compostable by the Biodegradable Products Institute, which also relies on lab results.

Such companies are looking for a different kind of proof of compostability -- a field test, Thoman said.

"At the end of the day, they wanted to know it composts OK in real life, since that is where it is destined to end up," Thoman said. "Many of the country's first compostable packaging buyers are here in the Northwest.

"And many manufacturers see our area as an incubator for what other areas are going to be doing in urban environments in the future."

Cedar Grove won't name which companies' products didn't pass muster in its compostability testing.

They aren't necessarily making false claims about their packaging, Thoman said. Many manufacturers are still in the process of formulating their products.

Some pass, more fail

To be approved at Cedar Grove, products must virtually disappear in less than two months as part of regular processing.

Products are marked and numbered with small pieces of electrical tape. They are then placed in mesh laundry bags with a few shovelsfull of yard waste.

Ropes are tied to the mesh bags and the bags are thrown into one of the giant, covered compost heaps.

When the bags come back, the results are pretty obvious to biodegradable technical specialist Michele Riggs.

Riggs demonstrated by displaying two tested samples.

One was nothing more than a piece of electrical tape with an identification number. Once attached to a product submitted for compostability testing, the tape was proof that the product was 100 percent compostable: It vanished.

Microbes turned the material into naturally occurring carbon dioxide, water and a light, fluffy mulchlike material ready for reuse in landscaping.

The other sample was a large, dirty, cardboard-colored clamshell take-out container that had hardly broken down at all.

That would be a fail.

Branding with brown

To keep imposters and products that compost too slowly out of its systems, Cedar Grove has created its own branding program.

Because of arrangements with about 15 packaging manufacturers, its brand, Cedar Grove Packaging, is showing up on compostable cups, take-out containers and other one-time-use items that have passed the testing program.

Some Snohomish County restaurants already use the branded packaging, marked with brown striping and Cedar Grove's logo. Consumers can buy the approved and branded products on Cedar Grove's website, gogreenscene.com, in small quantities for events such as weddings, school functions and church activities.

Packaging bearing the Cedar Grove name has already been shipped to other parts of the country, said Xavier Noblat, the marketing manger for the Seattle branch of Bunzl Distribution.

"Other cities are watching this," he said.

Thoman hopes Cedar Grove's packaging continues to take off.

"We're really the only one doing this scale of testing," Thoman said.

Thoman said compostable materials shouldn't be sent across the state to be buried when they can be turned into a valuable product.

"If it has a higher use, why are you shipping it 300 miles?" Thoman said.

Glossary

Biodegradable

Any material that can readily decompose through natural processes such as rotting in soil or oxidation in sunlight is considered biodegradable. Not all biodegradable materials are necessarily compostable.

Composting

In this natural process, tiny organisms such as bacteria break down organic matter such as grass clippings, weeds and food waste (nitrogen-rich greens) and twigs, paper and dried leaves (carbon-rich browns), producing carbon dioxide, water, heat and a final product known as humus, a mixture of broken down organic material that can be used as mulch or soil conditioner in landscaping situations.

Commercial composting facilities such as Cedar Grove Composting in Everett use hot, highly controlled, covered, aerated compost heaps.

Home gardeners often practice passive or cold composting, which is slower and often less effective at killing weed seeds and breaking down packaging billed as compostable.

Products that might take weeks to break down at Cedar Grove might take more than a year in a home compost pile.

Styrofoam

That takeout container you just threw away isn't actually Styrofoam. It's expanded polystyrene, also known as EPS.

Dow trademarked the Styrofoam name 60 years ago for its exclusive blue extruded polystyrene insulation. It quickly became a generic term for all plastic foam, including packing, disposable dishware and meat trays made of expanded polystyrene.

As Dow puts it: "You can't drink coffee from a Styrofoam cup because there is no such thing."

Expanded polystyrene foam has become an ecological enemy among environmentalists because it does not biodegrade.

Bioplastics and PLA

Unlike traditional plastics, which are derived from petroleum, so-called bioplastics or biopolymers are made from corn and other plant materials. They look and feel just like regular plastics, but are often compostable.

PLA, also known as polylactic acid, is an increasingly common bioplastic. It is made from lactic acid, which is made by fermenting dextrose, which is made from cornstarch, derived from corn.

Some environmentalists are critical34E36C18 of bioplastics because corn is a crop heavily subsidized by government programs.

PLA products are often labeled with a No. 7 recycling symbol, a mark that describes of variety of plastics classified as "other."

Though PLA plastics could be recycled, they exist in such small quantities that there isn't much of a post-consumer market for the materials right now.

Do not put them in your recycle bin. They can severely contaminate traditional plastic recycling loads, said Pete Keller, the area president of Allied Waste.

They should be thrown away or composted. Some, but not all, are compostable in commercial composting facilities such as Cedar Grove Composting in Everett.

Sarah Jackson: 425-339-3037, sjackson@heraldnet.com.