Compostable Product Disintegration Rate – Part II.

The central aim of the study, “The fate of (compostable) plastic products in a full scale industrial organic waste treatment facility,” was to gather more empirical data on whether the disintegration rate of compostable products is sufficient to be compatible with current organic waste treatment practices in the Netherlands. In an industrial organic waste treatment trial, nine different compostable plastic products were tested: organic waste collection bags, plant pots, tea bags, coffee pads, coffee capsules, and fruit labels. The authors studied how compostable plastics behave in the current Dutch treatment system for source separated municipal organic waste (GFT) and came to the conclusion that compostable products can be processed well with GFT. Part II of this article discusses the results of the full-scale trials.