Composting

Composting

There is nothing wrong with composting of garden and kitchen waste, but no plastics of any kind should be introduced into the process.

The US Dept of Agriculture’s National Organic Standards Board voted unanimously in January 2026 against allowing compostable plastic packaging to be treated as compost feedstock under organic standards. At the same time, the commercial composting sector has been increasingly vocal, organized, and explicit in its opposition to compostable plastic packaging entering compost streams.

This exposes something that should deeply concern anyone who genuinely cares about composting and sustainability.  Commercial composters are not waste processors. They are manufacturers of a regulated, market-facing product called compost. Their job is to create high-quality soil improvers with strict contamination limits, agronomic performance requirements, and customer trust. Organic compost, is governed by standards designed to protect soil health and agricultural integrity.

The USDA decision did not ban compostable plastic packaging out of ideology. It acknowledged what composters have been saying for years: synthetic packaging does not belong in compost feedstocks intended for organic agriculture.

A “Grocer” magazine survey of more than 1,000 individuals in 2019 found that “consumers think that plant-based compostable plastics are the most environmentally friendly packaging materials,” but most consumers don’t realise that “compostable” plastic does not convert into compost. It is required by ASTM D6400 and EN13432 to convert rapidly into CO2 gas, and the last thing the planet needs is more CO2. 

Also, many consumers do not know that “compostable” plastic is tested to biodegrade in an industrial composting facility – not in the open environment. In November 2019 a Danish court ruled in Ellepot v Sungrow that “compostable” PLA plant pots must not be described as biodegradable – because they are not biodegradable except in the special conditions found in an industrial composting facility.

“Compostable” plastics are really an irrelevance, because the main problem facing governments today is plastic waste which has escaped into the open environment, from which it cannot realistically be collected and taken to a composting facility.

Plastics marketed as compostable (i.e. hydro-biodegradable plastics) are far too expensive for everyday use, and there are very few industrial composting facilities available. For this reason, the German courts in Güthoff v Deutsche Umwelthilfe (2014) held that it is deceptive to market plastic as “compostable.”

These plastics are often marketed as renewable, but this ignores the fossil fuels used in the agricultural production process by the machines which clear the land, plough the land, bring the seeds to the farm and sow them, harrow the land, bring the fertilisers and pesticides to the farm and spread them, harvest the crop and transport it to the factory, and by the machines which polymerise the raw material.

It also ignores the land and water resources devoted to producing the raw materials, which could be used for growing food. EASAC (March 2020 report) says that “replacing PE by a bio-PE would require almost all (93.5%) of global wheat production.” This is completely unsustainable.

Although these plastics are marketed as “bio-based” they can contain up to 60% oil-based material, but this is hardly ever mentioned in the marketing material. Conversion of organic materials to CO2 at a rapid rate is not ”recovery.” Nature’s lignocellulosic wastes do not behave in this way, and if they did the products would have little value as soil improvers and fertilisers, having lost most of their substance and their carbon.

On 11th September 2003 a Report to the Australian Government by the Nolan-ITU Consultancy concluded that: “biodegradable plastics based on polyolefins contribute to the amount and nutritive value of the compost because much of the carbon from the plastic is in the form of intermediate oxidation products, humic material and cell biomass.

This is in contrast to plastics such as hydro-biodegradable polyesters (e.g. starch-based) that biodegrade at rates comparable to purified cellulose. At the end of the commercial composting process, all of the carbon from the latter has been converted to CO2 so there is a contribution to greenhouse gas levels but not to the value of the compost.”

The same Report concluded that “degradable polymers manufactured from renewable resources (e.g. crops) have greater impacts upon eutrophication due to the application of fertilizers to land.”

On 15th July 2020 a report appeared in “Waste Management” Vol. 113, Pages 312-318. The conclusions were:

  • In many cases, plastic bags are being replaced with compostable plastic bags.
  • Industrial composting processes do not completely remove film fragments.
  • Compost is thus a potential source of fragments from compostable plastic bags.
  • Compostable plastic fragments are then deteriorated in soil to microplastics.
  • Compostable microplastic results in an increased number of aflatoxigenic fungi.

Composters reject it

Even industrial composters and local authorities do not want ”compostable” plastics.

Click on the links below to hear an audio discussion on compostable plastics

English:

Espanol (LatAm)

Espanol (Mexican)

For example, Epsom & Ewell Borough Council in the UK link  Their website says “When you use plastic bags in your food waste caddy you’re simply using them to contain the food, and keep your caddy clean. They don’t get recycled. In fact, the first thing that happens when your food waste gets to the recycling plant is the plastic bags are all dredged out. They’re sent off for burning along with normal refuse to generate electricity. After that, the food waste can be recycled.”

“We used to ask you to use bio-liners to line your food waste caddy, but the food waste recycling companies found that bio-liners compost down much more slowly than the food. That slowed the recycling process and made it much more expensive. They tried dredging the bio liners out of the food waste, but the sticky bio-liners got tangled around the dredging equipment. Cleaning them off was very expensive, so they found that using plastic bags was, overall, much more cost-effective. They’re not recycled but good stuff still happens to them, and you can use old bags like bread-bags or carrier bags if you like.”

Many areas do not have industrial composting plants, and the Welsh Government has refused to invest in them. – Click to read. Plant based compostable plastics are going to landfill rather than recycling because so many local authorities are unable to deal with them.

“Compostable” resins are worse than conventional or biodegradable plastics when it comes to oxygen transmission-rate or moisture vapour transmission-rate. These resins are also water sensitive, and their physical, optical, mechanical, and chemical properties are inferior.

HOME COMPOSTING

Why would anyone want to buy an expensive plastic bag to transport kitchen waste to a home compost when they could use a bucket? The very idea is a nonsense.

Home composting of plastic is in any event dangerous and should not be encouraged:

A study for the French government at link says that “composting management must be in line with good practices recommended by ADEME (weekly brews for one month and then every 1 to 2 months, humidity control), – the average ambient temperature over the first three months of composting must be close to that of the standard: outside temperature of 25oC – 5oC. It is unlikely that all of these conditions will be met by individuals.”

The study also shows that “plastic bags are poorly disintegrated and biodegraded if good domestic composting practices are not applied. It also shows that, even when good practices are followed, there are still a few pieces of plastic bags of micrometric or even millimetre size in composts beyond the standard year of home composting.”

In addition, the study says “it appears that the biodegradation of plastic bags suitable for domestic composting makes little or no contribution to the formation of humus because, in accordance with the biodegradation tests of these materials according to the NF T 51 800 standard, at least 90% of the carbon organic dioxide is converted into carbon dioxide.”

Worse still, there is a danger that the plastic may have been contaminated by pathogens e.g. from purifying food, and that the temperature in a home compost may not be high enough to kill those pathogens.

Pet waste bags are sometimes made with “compostable” plastic, but they are never composted in reality. Due to contamination and pathogen risk, pet faeces are excluded from both home composting and municipal organic waste streams. As a result, compostable pet waste bags are almost universally disposed of via general waste, where they go to landfill or incineration. In these conditions, the “compostable” attribute provides no environmental benefit whatsoever.

Equally important, if pet waste bags are littered — which is common in parks, streets, and open environments — compostable plastics do not reliably biodegrade. They persist, fragment, and contribute to pollution, meaning they perform no better than conventional plastics once mismanaged.

In short, compostable pet waste bags solve a problem that does not exist, while failing to address the real issues of plastic persistence, litter, and environmental leakage.

However, Pet waste bags are exactly the type of product for which d2w technology was designed:

  • d2w bags perform identically to conventional plastic during use — strong, hygienic, and reliable.
  • They remain recyclable during their useful life.
  • Critically, if they escape collection or are littered, they biodegrade safely in the open environment, rather than persisting for decades.
  • d2w does not rely on composting infrastructure, perfect consumer behaviour, or separate waste streams to deliver an environmental benefit.

For single use contaminated products like pet waste bags, this is the only approach that aligns with real world disposal behaviour