The long-awaited "home-compostable" on-pack logo for the UK could be available by autumn, according to The Composting Association.
Melvyn Chimes, director of business services at The Composting Association, said the organisation and other interested parties were still trying to identify a testing protocol for home-compostable packaging materials, but progress could be made once this had been agreed.
The Composting Association has been in talks on the issue for months with the Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap), members of the UK Compostable Packaging Group, which is administered by the National Non-Food Crops Centre, and European Bioplastics, the owner of the existing "compostable" seedling logo.
It has taken time to work through technical criteria, producer obligations for recovery of packaging waste, and potential collaboration with established packaging certification schemes in other European Union countries.
The EN 13432 compostable packaging standard has been under review because it is more suitable for industrial composting, since it requires biodegradation testing at a temperature of 58 degrees Celsius, within a tolerance of plus or minus 2 degrees Celsius.
Chimes said European Bioplastics had agreed "in principle" to the on-pack logo, but some of its members were concerned that the logo "might be discredited" if plastic compostable packaging such as polylatic acid (PLA) took a long time to degrade.
"Everyone wants packaging on which the new home-composting logo appears to do what it should," he said.
It is anticipated that the new logo for home compostable packaging and plastics would include the European Bioplastics seedling and other design elements to make it easy to distinguish from the existing logo.
Source: packagingnews
Melvyn Chimes, director of business services at The Composting Association, said the organisation and other interested parties were still trying to identify a testing protocol for home-compostable packaging materials, but progress could be made once this had been agreed.
The Composting Association has been in talks on the issue for months with the Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap), members of the UK Compostable Packaging Group, which is administered by the National Non-Food Crops Centre, and European Bioplastics, the owner of the existing "compostable" seedling logo.
It has taken time to work through technical criteria, producer obligations for recovery of packaging waste, and potential collaboration with established packaging certification schemes in other European Union countries.
The EN 13432 compostable packaging standard has been under review because it is more suitable for industrial composting, since it requires biodegradation testing at a temperature of 58 degrees Celsius, within a tolerance of plus or minus 2 degrees Celsius.
Chimes said European Bioplastics had agreed "in principle" to the on-pack logo, but some of its members were concerned that the logo "might be discredited" if plastic compostable packaging such as polylatic acid (PLA) took a long time to degrade.
"Everyone wants packaging on which the new home-composting logo appears to do what it should," he said.
It is anticipated that the new logo for home compostable packaging and plastics would include the European Bioplastics seedling and other design elements to make it easy to distinguish from the existing logo.
Source: packagingnews
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