An invitation to litter? FPA calls for an end to the term “biodegradable” in packaging

28 Nov 2018 --- The Foodservice Packaging Association (FPA) is calling for an end to the term “biodegradable” when used in reference to packaging. The term is misplaced and misunderstood when used by industry, regulators and consumers alike, and may invite consumers to litter, Martin Kersh, Executive Director of the FPA tells PackagingInsights.

The term biodegradable may lead some to wrongly assume that packaging carrying the presumed ecological tag of “biodegradable” will “disappear to nothing within a very short period” and in any location. However, this is certainly misleading for the public and can result in the erroneous belief that it is acceptable to litter biodegradable packaging. 

As Kersh notes: “I think the confusion is that there are people who buy packaging that is biodegradable and genuinely think that it will disappear in a matter of days. But if it were to, how on earth would you stock it?”

The confusion surrounding biodegradability, in turn, leads to confusion around compostable materials, which require appropriate end of life treatment and are not acceptable as land or marine litter. 

The confusion often leads to the two terms being used interchangeably, although they are not the same. This is succinctly explained by European Bioplastics (EUBP): “In order to be recovered by means of organic recycling (composting) a material or product needs to be biodegradable.” However, “composability is a characteristic of a product, packaging or associated component that allows it to biodegrade under specific conditions (e.g., a certain temperature or timeframe).”

Compostable plastics must be biodegradable to compost, but biodegradable products are not necessarily compostable.

Aspects of the concern expressed by the FPA are also shared by Hasso von Pogrell, Managing Director at EUBP.

“Indeed, claiming a product to be biodegradable is incorrect or, rather: incomplete. Almost everything is biodegradable, even though it might take decades or even centuries for a given product to biodegrade,” von Pogrell tells PackagingInsights.

In an atmosphere where issues surrounding packaging materials are hitting the headlines almost daily and potentially confounding consumers, a reduction in the number of terms being “thrown-around” would make the situation better, according to Kersh. 

Offering criteria on what  “biodegradable” is
Yet, von Pogrell believes that instead of blacklisting the term, a set of standard criteria should be provided by the relevant regulators.

“When claiming biodegradability, it must always be declared in which environment, under which conditions, and in what timeframe a said product will fully biodegrade. This should, furthermore, be backed by a commonly accepted standard. This would be at least national, or even better, a European or International standard, containing clear pass/fail criteria, according to which a product has been certified to biodegrade completely,” he explains.

“As to communicating the property of biodegradation, we, as EUBP, take great care to educate and inform all interested parties about the correct way of doing so,” von Pogrell adds.

According to von Pogrell, the correct levels of biodegradability could be:

• biodegradable in industrial compost
• biodegradable in home compost
• biodegradable in soil/soil-biodegradable

It is due to the delicate nature of the term and the way it is often misconstrued that the EUBP already offer guidelines on how to interpret the term in its communications.

This is also done to side-step “market players who deliberately misuse this term for their products, which do not biodegrade within a reasonable timeframe,” continues von Pogrell “We encounter this problem very often with producers of oxo- or enzyme-mediated additives, who claim that if its additive is mixed-in with otherwise non-biodegradable polymers, the resulting product will biodegrade in almost any kind of environment.”

Essentially, as crucial as innovative and ecological materials are, the pervasive throwaway culture is also a large component of the waste mountain facing the globe and spilling into the oceans. Consumer education around the suitable end of life destinations for packaging is critical, and national and international clarification of “biodegradable” definitions, as von Pogrell notes, could be incredibly useful for that.

By Laxmi Haigh

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