With renewed interest in the use of compostable materials with the pushback on single-use plastics following the BBC Blue Planet II Series, ORG thought it time to conduct its own trials on compostable packaging to separate the fact from fiction.

One of the solutions to reducing the volume of plastic material that is littered both in the urban and marine environment is to use materials that degrade in both commercial and domestic composting systems. This trial was designed to track some fully certified (EN13432) materials through an APHA approved commercial in-vessel composting process that treats food and garden waste, to see how effectively it degraded under normal commercial conditions. There has been some scepticism in the efficacy of these materials in the past, so this trial provides robust evidence to demonstrate that under normal commercial conditions certified material does degrade successfully.