Composting Update :: Now with EATware Biodegradable Food Containers
Posted by Chad Norman March 6th, 2008 .
I’ve blogged about Whole Foods serving most of its goodies in containers made from plastic #5, which is not recyclable locally. Finally, our local outlet has an alternative: biodegradable food containers. (and my compost pile couldn’t be happier…hopefully!)
So, Jen has come home a few times with the brown EATware containers, and they actually seem OK - though I do remember hearing something about greens not staying fresh. Regardless, the fact that they’re made from bamboo and sugar cane, and can be reclaimed in my compost bin in about 180 days is refreshing. Can you imagine how many palettes of plastic #5 containers go straight from Whole Foods to our homes to the landfill each year?
Steps like this signal change, experimentation, and progression - cheers to Whole Foods! And I’ll let you know in the next composting update how they are breaking down.
Loading ...
I hate to bust your bubble, but compostable products are only going to degrade in commercial or municipal composts, not in a backyard compost. They need higher temperatures than backyard composts. (Please look up the standard for composting- ASTM 6400.)In a recent article in the Smithstonian Magazine, a gentleman put a compostable container in his compost for 6 months and it never changed one iota. There are 113 commercial composts in the US and only 1/4 take food scraps and compostables. I would recommend a product that will degrade in a landfill- Green Film. It is certified to break down anaerobically, no oxygen and leave no harmful chemicals behind like oxy degradables. Whole Foods and Wal-Mart have also stated that they will use biobased food containers, but won’t take them back and recycle them. Why? Because they can’t be recycled with regular plastics, only biobased.
Thanks for the info. I think it is worth pointing out here that a lot of the trash in Charleston is collected by Fennell Container. None of this trash ends up in the landfill - it gets incinerated. In locations where this is the practice, biodegradable containers are wasted.
Also, a reusable container is the real solution. There is no reason a single-use item must be used to transport food from store to kitchen.