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Cedar Grove's EverettThe number of compostable dishware products available in the Seattle market has grown 900 percent in less than three years thanks to a new
law requiring restaurants to use only recyclable or compostable single-use items
.
The law, which went into affect July 1, 2010, aims to reduce the more than 6,000 tons of plastic dishware that hits the landfill each year, according to the city.
But the lack of a unified standard for compostable dishware products is creating a rift through the relatively nascent compostable-packaging industry. In the Seattle area, for example, compostable products have to be certified by theBiodegradable Products Institute (BPI) as well as meet additional requirements set by Cedar Grove Composting, the Northwest’s largest composting facility.
But in San Francisco, which has been collecting food scraps and compostable packaging citywide since 2001 and last year mandated that all properties compost, requires that compostable products be tested and certified by BPI. “Earlier on we had our compost facility run their own tests, but the stuff that met the standard did break down in the process,” says Jack Macy, commercial zero waste coordinator for San Francisco’s Department of Environment.
Susan Thoman, Cedar Groves’ director of corporate and business development, says the BPI tests, which are lab tests, don’t address the specific conditions in Cedar Groves’ facilities. That’s why Cedar Grove takes a product and puts it through its actual composting process to measure what remains at the end.
The Everett, Wash.–based company is not alone. A new survey of 40 facilities nationwide that accept food waste found that 37.5 percent require certification by BPI, while 20 percent indicated that onsite testing was also conducted prior to accepting compostable products or packaging, according to the report released by Sustainable Packaging Coalition called “Compostable Packaging: The Reality on the Ground.”
See more at: http://sustainableindustries.com/articles/2010/07/compost-conundrum-muddies-market
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