I found a very interesting article in my hometown newspaper this weekend. There is a large composting company called Cedar Grove Composting in Everett, Washington, that is researching just how compostable these various new packaging materials are and certifying the ones that past their testing.
Here's the company:
http://www.cedar-grove.com/ Here's the article:
http://bit.ly/9Gksbp I shortened the URL because it is quite lengthy, but if they change the address of this page over time, you can search on it by the title and such. This was published August 15, 2010 in the Herald (
http://www.heraldnet.com) and the article is by Sarah Jackson. It's quite thorough and has several links (good links - including info about that Sun Chips bag, which has certification from Cedar Grove) and a link to the "Seven Sins of Greenwashing," among others).
Here are the first few paragraphs. It's a fairly long article:
Quote:
What packaging is compostable? It's complicated
Package labels can be confusing. Here's what you should know.
By Sarah Jackson, Herald Writer
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.
Read the rest on the Herald website. I saved a copy as PDF if somehow this goes away, or if you would like to put it somewhere in the Dirt Doctor site.