Read the full story at Agriculture Dive.
The Biodegradable Products Institute filed a petition with the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Tuesday urging the agency to update its definition of composting and set a definition for composting feedstocks, hoping to make it easier for facilities to accept food scraps and sell their product to farms.
Existing definitions allow for certain contaminants like plastic mulch lining and produce stickers to slip into compost as long as operators make a reasonable effort to remove them, but compostable packaging that passes certification still isn’t allowed under USDA organic agriculture rules, said Rhodes Yepsen, executive director of BPI.
While the federal government and USDA have advocated for biomass-derived materialsand “climate-smart agriculture,” the current federal definition could undermine state and local efforts to improve the circularity of packaging and ramp up food scrap diversion in places like California and Washington. “That’s put things on a collision course,” Yepsen said.
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