Ecoist: GreenStripe® and Composting
Posted by Eco-Products on Dec 8th 2015
GreenStripe® products are cool. And they are especially cool when they can be commercially composted.
If you’re using our GreenStripe® products, you probably want to send them to a commercial composting facility once they’ve been used. After all, part of what makes these products so great is that they help keep food scraps and packaging out of landfills. But how do you find a commercial composter near you? Check out www.findacomposter.com. It’s an on-line database that is searchable by ZIP code.
Can’t find a facility in your area? Sadly, you are not alone. The U.S. does not have sufficient infrastructure to process all of our organic material into valuable soil amendment. Some progress is being made, such as California’s recent passage of five laws aimed at promoting composting. At a Federal level, EPA recently announced the framework of their Sustainable Materials Management Plan for 2017 – 2022. One of its goals for 2020 is to increase the number of new and existing composting facilities that accept food scraps. Considering the EPA and USDA also set a goal to decrease wasted food in the U.S. by 50% by 2030, these are exciting times for composting.
Still, there is much work to be done. Increasing our advocacy for expanding access to commercial composting is a high priority for Eco-Products®. You may have read about this as one of our goals in our 2015 Sustainability Report. We are active in a number of industry organizations tackling this issue, from the U.S. Composting Council, to the Biodegradable Products Institute, to the Foodservice Packaging Institute.
Hopefully one day, composting will be ubiquitous. In the meantime, you can still feel good about going with GreenStripe® even if you can’t compost. That is because these products are made with renewable resources like sugarcane, corn, and paper, which means they can be grown again and again. Given we live in a world with finite resources, we think this is a better approach than using virgin petroleum to make single-use products. The benefits of using renewable resources still hold true, regardless of where these products end up.
Our very own Sustainability Maven served up this delicious nugget of green geekery. If this little taste leaves you hungry for more, you can always cruise over to the Greenology and/or Training sections at EcoProducts.com for a full helping. If you have a question you can’t find the answer to you can email her at sustainabilitymaven@ecoproducts.com