Why Composting Sites Are Banning Compostable Plastics _ One Small Step _ NowThis Earth

This is a plastic fork, this is a compostable plastic fork, and they're almost identical. If you weren't looking for it, you really wouldn't be able to tell them apart. When something says it's compostable, does that mean that it's good for the environment? Not necessarily. You need more information to answer that question. This is more so like a hard compostable plastic, and unfortunately, right now, we don't take it in our compost. For the past few years, I've noticed this trend. Single-use items like straws, cups, and cutlery are all of a sudden becoming compostable. When I first started seeing these, I assumed that something labeled compostable must be an environmentally-friendly alternative to plastic. But then I went to drop off my compost at the farmer's market, and I literally read a sign that said, no compostable plastics. So what's the deal? If my composting program is not accepting these materials, is compostable plastic a lie? To find out, I'm gonna connect with researchers who study the environmental impacts of compostable packaging. Then I'll visit my compost drop-off site to understand the challenges of composting these materials. I'm Lucy Biggers, and this is One Small Step. I've been worried about plastic in our ocean since I first made a video about it in 2016. 90% of seabirds have plastic in their stomachs. And if you've watched any of my other videos, you know that I'm a huge fan of composting. So when I saw this label compostable, I thought it promised that this material could biodegrade back to the earth in the same way that our food waste biodegrades when we compost it. But it turns out it's not that simple. And the environmental impacts of compostable packaging are still debated today. For one, the materials could be toxic. In 2019, Sweetgreen and Chipotle's compostable bowls made headlines when it was discovered that they contained PFA chemicals that had been linked to cancer. Environmentalists were concerned that if the bowls were composted, PFAs in the bowls could contaminate the local environment and the compost. Second, the label compostable is not the same thing as sustainable. In a 2018 report, researchers at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality examined 18 years of life cycle assessment studies on the environmental impact of compostable food serviceware and found that 76% of the time, the compostable food serviceware had a higher environmental impact than the non-compostable packaging. I'm excited to connect with Peter Canepa, who's a life cycle assessment specialist who took part in that Oregon compost report. So what were your findings? So the findings we got for compostability showed that for packaging, and then even more specifically within packaging for food serviceware, the potential for something to be composted actually more times than not led to higher environmental impacts for that packaging. So compostable packaging has a higher environmental impact than just regular packaging like plastic. Not always, and just to be clear, about two-thirds of the time it did, and about one-third of the time the compostable packaging led to a lower life cycle. So it wasn't consistent across the board. And that's because these comparisons were all different material types and production types. Do a quick scan online, and it becomes obvious that the types of compostable packaging that are available to consumers varies greatly. So you can't say that all compostable packaging is good or bad. Instead, it's important what environmental variables you look at. So for example, the production of compostable bioplastics like this fork are made from sugarcane, soy, or corn, and they produce less greenhouse gases than plastic made from oil. However, bioplastics made from plants require farming, which uses more land, fertilizer, and pesticides, which causes pollution, acidification, and algae blooms. Now, this doesn't mean that using fossil fuels to create plastics isn't bad. Their negative effects are well-documented and researched. But it does go to show that in certain cases, compostables can have a greater drain on certain resources. Another challenge with compostable, in particular things like compostable food serviceware, they are often very similar in their aesthetic and their feel to regular non-compostable food serviceware. That leads to confusion for users and often can lead to contamination of compost when these lookalikes get put in the compost. And here in Oregon, that's a big problem, so much so that actually all 13 of our industrial composters kind of put out sort of a letter to all the local jurisdictions saying, look, we don't want this food serviceware in the compost because it's very challenging for us to deal with it. We end up getting contamination. We have to go through the compost. And also the addition of these compostable food serviceware packages prevents the composters from promoting or selling their finished compost as organic. The challenge of composting these materials brings me back to Union Square. Last week, I saw this sign that said no compostable plastics. So I decided to come back to understand why they have this policy. I'm gonna talk to Kyleen Sanchez, who works for the Lower East Side Ecology Center, to try to understand why they don't accept these materials that should be going to the compost. Last week I was here, there was a sign that said no compostable plastics, but this week I don't see it. So where is it? Yeah, so we are putting away temporarily because we are now accepting the BPI certified compostable bags. This bio bag is something that we've been testing for over six months now. And we actually do, this is the one item that we do actually accept here. BPI, or the Biodegradable Products Institute, has been certifying compostable packaging since the late 90s. They scientifically verify that items will successfully break down in composting facilities without harming the quality of the finished compost. A material can be approved for backyard composting, like the bag we just saw, or composting at an industrial composting site, which have a bigger scale and higher temperatures to process more difficult materials. So they're good to go in our compost, versus something like this. This is more so like a hard compostable plastic. And unfortunately right now, we don't take it in our compost. We have to do a little bit more of like, to play testing with this as well. But right now we cannot accept the harder compostable plastics. Most hard compostable plastics are certified for industrial composting, which means you can't just toss it into your compost at home. Problem is, most Americans don't have access to industrial composting. According to research by compost science journal, BioCycle, there are just around 200 full-scale composting sites in the US that can process compostable plastics. And of those 200 composting sites, less than 50% accept compostable plastic products. So it sounds like with compostable plastic, it's like, it depends. Like it varies so much from material to material, which is really confusing for the consumer. It is, it is. Which is why we specifically use the ones certified from BPI, because those we've tested and those are okay. If it's a bag that you see that's literally just green, I would say don't trust it because there's no certification on there. Just a few minutes later, this woman came up with a green bag and thought it was compostable. Turns out it was just plastic. So she thought that this one was compostable, but then if you look at it, there's no compostable marking. This has the HTPE, which is a plastic. So what about the original problem that drew me to compostables in the first place? Ocean plastic pollution. Do compostable plastics play any part in alleviating that problem? Well, the short answer is no. I reached out to the Sustainable Packaging Coalition to understand how these materials interacted with the ocean. And they told me in an email, compostable plastics are designed to break down in industrial composting facilities, or in some cases, in in-home composting systems. These materials are not tested for how quickly they break down in oceans. Consumers should not be led to believe that compostable plastics will break down more quickly in any environment other than an industrial composting system, and we should not encourage littering of compostable plastics. Recently, several institutions and countries have banned single-use plastics in an attempt to curb ocean plastic pollution. In University of California's ban, they said they will incentivize vendors to develop reusable and compostable packaging for their products. But from researching compostable plastics, I'm worried that using them could create a whole new host of problems without solving the initial problem of ocean plastic pollution. So here's what you can do. One, reduce. Every expert I spoke to said reducing is the best option and only way to really lower our footprint. Two, if you still need to use single-use items and want to use compostable plastics, look for that BPI certification. And then when you're done using the compostables, make sure they're actually getting composted. That's all for this episode of compostable plastics. I hope you learned something and you can share with your friends the information in this video. And on this, I didn't even touch upon the impacts of compostable plastics when they go to landfill. In other videos, I've talked about how sending food waste and clothing to landfill is bad because it biodegrades and releases methane. There's still a lot of research about how compostable plastics act in a dump, and maybe that's a video I'll do in the future. Thank you so much for watching. I'm Lucy Biggers. See you next time.