Sustainability has become such a good consumer marketing hook, that there are now many companies attempting to greenwash their products: making very tenuous claims of sustainability or biodegradability. Just because a material is derived from a source other than fossil fuel does not automatically make it either green or sustainable.

One of the largest and most obvious attempts at greenwashing began to surface last year when some US aerosol cans appeared with the slogan “Contains no CFCs” or CFC free.” A redundant claim, of course they contain no CFC gasses: they have been banned by United Nations treaties since the early 1990’s when the danger to the environment was thought to be simply the hole in the ozone layer! We now know the environmental problem is a whole lot larger.

To claim that a packaging application is biodegradable is actually a dangeriously spurious claim unless it can be substantiated and quantified in a realistic manner. After all what could be considered a reasonable timescale for a product to be considered biodegradable? One hundred years or 200 years or a thousand years?

When discussing biodegradable packaging materials, honesty of the claim backed by a certification process must be the yardstick.  In order for a product to make a claim to be biodegradable, or compostable, it is reasonable to expect that the material can deliver good quality compost, in an industrial composting unit in a three month time-frame. Otherwise it just isn’t commercially viable in the context of sustainability.

Today, everyone wants everything to be totally pure, many brands using bioplastic want to put a label stating that it is “100% compostable” on the pack, believing that it adds value.

They should be very careful about doing so, it could actually result in the erosion of brand value when the consumer deliberately selects the product on the basis of a sustainability claim, happily buries it in the garden compost heap and returns six months later to discover it still looking fresh and new.

Consumers have yet to understand that there are two different types of composting: Common or garden home composting – dig a hole and dump in the vegetable matter, and Industrial Composting requiring heat and specific enzymes which attack and literally eat the material.

 To the consumer ‘composting’ implies total disintegration, and however biodegradable PLA based materials might be a package often contains some additives to improve the functional properties of the material. Unless specific studies have been commissioned to verify claims made it would be wise to steer away from claiming 100% compostability - regardless of how easily it trips off the tongue - keep it simple just use the term ‘compostable’, or better yet ‘No fossil fuels were used in this package”.