Certifications & Compliance
Compostability claims live or die on certification. The guides in this category are written for compliance teams, packaging engineers and procurement specialists who need to verify, not assume — covering the full landscape of certification bodies (BPI, TUV Austria, DIN CERTCO, ABA), the underlying testing standards (ASTM D6400, EN 13432, ISO 17088, AS 4736, AS 5810), and the regulatory frameworks that increasingly mandate certified products in the US, EU, UK and Australia. We treat certifications as a technical subject, not a marketing badge — so expect specifics on testing protocols, verification processes, and the consequences of getting it wrong.
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How to Audit Your Foodware for PFAS Content
A foodware PFAS audit is the only reliable way to know whether the molded fiber bowls, paper plates, and grease-resistant wrappers in your operation contain the forever chemicals that California, Washington, New York, and a growing list of states have banned. The audit isn’t a single test — it’s a documentation-first workflow that combines supplier…
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What Is Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)?
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) shifts responsibility for product end-of-life from consumers and municipalities to the producers who put the products on the market. The concept originated in Europe in the 1990s and has expanded globally to cover packaging, electronics, batteries, tires, and other product categories. EPR is one of the more substantial regulatory frameworks shaping…
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The Annual Sustainability Audit: A 3-Hour Home Walk-Through
Most household sustainability practices drift over time. New products enter the home; routines shift; the system that worked two years ago slowly degrades. The annual sustainability audit is a structured 3-hour walk-through that catches drift, identifies new opportunities, and produces a focused action list for the coming year. Done annually, the audit keeps household sustainability…
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8 Compostable Items Every Hotel Banquet Needs
Hotel banquets are one of the larger commercial users of disposable foodware. A single mid-sized hotel hosts hundreds of events per year, ranging from small business breakfasts to 500-guest weddings. The disposable footprint across all those events is substantial. The compostable upgrade across the banquet operation involves eight specific item categories that together cover the…
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Compostable Hospital Wristbands: Where They’ve Been Trialed
Hospital ID wristbands are one of the more invisible single-use plastic categories in healthcare. Every patient receives at least one wristband at admission; large hospitals issue tens of thousands of bands per month. Compostable alternatives have been explored at various pilot scale for years, with mixed adoption results that reveal interesting patterns about what actually…
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How to Standardize Compostable Specifications Across Franchise Operations
Franchise operations face a specific challenge with compostable packaging: maintaining brand-level consistency across hundreds or thousands of locations operating in different states, different waste-management environments, and under different local regulations. The supplier sourcing, certification verification, and training infrastructure that makes compostable specifications work at single-location scale doesn’t translate directly to multi-location operations. Here’s the working…
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The Basics of TÜV OK Compost Certification Tiers
TÜV Austria’s OK Compost certification family is the most widely-recognized European compostability mark, and the structure has more layers than most buyers realize. OK Compost INDUSTRIAL, OK Compost HOME, OK Bio-Based, OK Soil Biodegradable, OK Marine Biodegradable, and several others each test different end-of-life conditions or different attributes. Knowing which mark on a package actually…
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What’s ASTM D6400 and Why Should I Care?
ASTM D6400 is the US standard that almost every state law, every FTC compostability claim, and every BPI certification ultimately rests on. It looks like a dry technical specification, but the way it’s written and enforced shapes what ‘compostable’ actually means on a product label, what gets accepted at industrial composting facilities, and what gets…
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What’s EN 13432 and How Does It Differ From ASTM?
EN 13432 and ASTM D6400 are the two standards almost every compostable packaging product gets tested against. They look interchangeable on a spec sheet. They aren’t. The differences matter most when you ship across borders, work with multiple certifying bodies, or have to defend a compostability claim in front of a procurement officer who asks…
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12 States Leading on Compostable Packaging Regulation: A 2025 B2B Compliance Reference
State-level compostable packaging regulation has accelerated through 2019-2025. Twelve states lead on regulatory frameworks affecting B2B foodservice procurement. Knowing the leaders helps multi-state operators prioritize compliance attention.
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What Does ‘Compostable’ Actually Mean on a Label?
The word ‘compostable’ on a product label can mean specific certified things, vague claims with no enforcement, or something in between. Different certifications mean different things; products without certifications often mean nothing at all. For consumers trying to make informed choices, understanding what ‘compostable’ actually means on a label requires reading carefully and knowing what…
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The 5-Minute Bathroom Audit That Reveals Hidden Plastic
Most households don’t realize how much plastic accumulates in their bathroom. The plastic isn’t always obvious — it’s in the toothbrush, the floss container, the dental floss itself, the deodorant, the shampoo bottle, the conditioner bottle, the body wash, the hand wash, the moisturizer container. A 5-minute audit reveals the volume; the resulting list usually…