The Truth About Compostable Utensils

Appearances can be Deceiving: The Truth About Compostable Utensils

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By Paula Gonzalez Alvarez, Bethesda Green Environmental Leader

Out of all the alternatives to plastic, compostable flatware is rising in popularity. Efforts by cities across the United States to reduce plastic pollution are widespread, led by cities such as Seattle, Washington and Berkeley, California. Seattle requires all food service businesses to &#;find recyclable or compostable packaging and service ware alternatives to all disposable food service items such as containers, cups, straws, utensils, and other products,&#; (1). Berkeley recently established a new rule which &#;requires all cafés and restaurants to start charging 25 cents for disposable cups. The cups, in addition to lids, utensils, straws, and clamshells, must also now be certified compostable,&#; (2). Multiple well-known food chains are also trying to become more environmentally friendly by offering compostable materials. In fact, Starbucks is currently joining efforts with McDonalds in order to make a &#;fully recyclable, compostable paper cup,&#; (3). Here in Bethesda, restaurants such as Sweetgreen and Cava Mezze Grill are joining the effort to reduce waste and go green. These efforts, on top of recycling, are contributing to us becoming a zero-waste society.

It is great to see these advancements in sustainability efforts, but while compostable materials are not as harmful as plastics, they still need a certain environment to break down. Compostable utensils made from natural materials, such as cornstarch or potato starch, are a type of plastic known as bioplastics since they come from nature. According to Eco-Products (4), these bioplastics will most likely not break down in backyard compost heaps. While home composting is great for food scraps, the conditions in the composting heap are not the ones needed for these developed materials to disintegrate. Similarly, these products are usually not certified as marine degradable, meaning that if they end up in our oceans or waterways, they will not break down either. It is, therefore, no surprise that these compostable utensils cannot break down if they end up in landfills either. The lack of oxygen and microorganisms in the landfills prevents the materials from ever breaking down. So, the only way that these utensils can be completely disintegrated is if they are disposed of in a compost heap.

Usually, people who eat at restaurants that offer compostable flatware, such as Sweetgreen, dispose of their compost there, in a composting bin. Because of COVID, people are getting take-out and eating it at their homes. Sadly, most people do not compost at their homes or schedule compost pick up, so they end up tossing them in the trash. If people do not care enough to do their part, the effort and money put in by companies to reduce pollution is useless. Compostable materials are only good for the environment if each one makes sure to dispose of them properly in composting sites.

Fortunately, there are multiple companies who offer clean and convenient composting services to businesses, organizations, and residential customers in Bethesda. One of them is the Compost Crew (5). The Compost Crew serves throughout Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D.C. They provide weekly curbside food scrap collection services which are continuing to operate during the COVID-19 pandemic. The way their company works is that the more people in an area that compost with them, the cheaper they make the rates for all the people living in that area.

As a community everyone needs to start composting at their homes. Typically, around 50% of the garbage set out at the curb is compostable, and while compost is made into &#;black gold,&#; trash goes into landfills, which add pollution to the surrounding soil, air, and water, contribute to climate change, and can be a health hazard to humans and animals (6). Therefore, registering to get your compost bin picked up does not only allow people to compost bioplastics, but it also helps the environment.

Composting does not take as much work as people expect. First, residents and businesses in Bethesda can pick up one of the free composting bins that are provided by the Department of Environmental Protection in Montgomery County, MD (7). There are various available pick-up locations such as Davis Library and the Whole Foods Market on River Road. Next, sign up for weekly compost pickups on the Compost Crew website. Lastly, just put all your food scraps, yard materials, and organic materials in the composting bin and wait for it to get picked up. If enough people follow these steps and join the composting bandwagon, the community could get the compost pick-up prices down to less than $6.00 per month.

While using compostable utensils is environmentally friendly, it requires full participation from the community to ensure that they end up in composting heaps. So, start composting now!

About the author:

Paula Gonzalez Alvarez, Bethesda Green Environmental Leader

Paula Gonzalez Alvarez is a Senior at Walt Whitman High School and an aspiring engineer. She believes learning about green living and environmental conservation will help her create more sustainable projects in the future.

There&#;s a growing market for disposable eating utensils. They have names like taterware or spudware -- forks and knives can be made out of potato starch instead of plastic. You might buy the tableware believing its better for the environment. But, that depends on where you toss it out.

Judy Adams is shopping for cutlery at Whole Foods in Sacramento. She compares two packets of disposable forks. One is made out of recycled plastic. The other is made out of corn starch.

&#;Compostable versus recyclable? What does that mean? Where does it say?,&#; asks Adams.

 She reads the label on the back of the compostable forks.

&#;Our cutlery converts to soil, so you can put it into a composting pile. In a commercial composting system,&#; Adams reads. &#; Oh! What does that mean? You have to have a commercial composting system? Oops.&#;

Adams is confused. She says she will likely toss the forks in the trash because she assumes they will break down in a landfill. But, that may not be the case. 

The product is made by Worldcentric, which is headquartered in Petaluma, CA.

Marketing Director Annie Davis points out products in the company&#;s showroom like their new compostable Asian soup spoon.  The company manufactures everything from compostable ice cream cups to straws at production facilities in Asia.

It&#;s a big business &#; worth about $30 million annually.

Davis stresses that all Worldcentric products are certified by the Biodegradable Product Institute (BPI).

For more information, please visit compostable knife wholesaler.

She reads the BPI disclaimer on the back of the Worldcentric catalog: &#;Compostable in industrial facilities.&#;

&#;And then there is small language -- check locally as these do not exist in many communities," says Davis. "Not suitable for backyard composting.&#;

As Davis says, industrial facilities might not exist nearby.

The nearest facility that does accept bio-plastics is an hour away in Vacaville, CA.

There is a composting facility just down the road in Novato, Redwood Landfill and Recycling Center, but it only accept yardwaste, food scraps and paper products.

Alisha McCutheon runs the composting facility. She says a lot of her customers don&#;t know Redwood can&#;t accept bio-plastics. So, they&#;re in the mix. 

&#;Thin things like bio-bags break down pretty readily," says McCutheon. &#;Things like spudware, potato cutlery, forks and knives make out of cornstarch -- they almost don&#;t break down at all.&#;

McCutheon points to a large pile of debris. It&#;s the leftovers -- even a nerf football -- that didn&#;t break down after five months of composting.

She picks up a compostable spoon and dusts it off. She says all the leftovers &#; including the spoon -- are now on the way to the trash.  

And, that&#;s not good news for the environment.

Joe Greene, a mechanical engineering professor at Chico State University and an expert on bio-plastics says, &#;The problem is that these actually can harm the environment more than regular petroleum based plastics if you throw them in the landfill because they generate methane gas."

Methane is a toxic greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.

Greene says it&#;s important that certified compostable food service items end up at facilities with the proper capacity to break them down.

&#;They will bio-degrade in a hot industrial compost," says Greene. &#;They won&#;t bio-degrade in your backyard necessarily.&#;

Greene tried tossing some compostable spoons into his backyard compost bin. But, he says the products only broke down about 30 percent after two years.

He says the spoons will eventually biodegrade, but that could take a very long time.

He gives the example of a bio-plastic bag he picked up in . The product said &#;biodegradable&#; on it, but he watched it for the last decade -- it&#;s still intact.

In other words, both compostable goods and composting facilities vary widely.

So, before you buy eco-friendlier plastic, Greene suggests you research the product, and determine where you&#;ll throw it away.

Resources: Research compostable food service items. Find a composting facility near you. 

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