As a foodservice business owner, I recently received a notice from the City of Seattle informing me that, as of July 1 2010, I would have to switch to compostable or recyclable plastic food service products. Around the same time I noticed that the wholesale foodservice grocery had begun carrying compostable cups.
I'm glad to see a spreading awareness about sustainable materials, but I haven't started using compostable food service products yet in my own business. There are just too many things that don't add up to me. I was at Cafe Fiore the other day, and was told that they had no way of recycling their recyclable cups, because the city composting service wouldn't take them. And yet the flyer I received in the mail said that businesses would soon only be allowed to use products that were approved by the composting company.
An article in yesterday's Oregonian detailed additional difficulties: compostable products are often mistaken for plastic, and even a small amount of them can ruin a batch of plastic recyclables. And they don't compost in backyard composting bins: they need a commercial composting operation (although there are difficulties there as well, as I learned at Fiore.)
My own ambivalence also comes from the fact that we're using food crops for disposable packaging when people all over the world are experiencing food security concerns. And why are we using corn? Is it because corn is so heavily subsidized in this country? Perhaps there are technological reasons that I don't understand, but the whole situation makes me feel suspicious.
On top of all this, I've always been turned off by green marketing, and there seems to be an awful lot of it with respect to compostable cups, even from companies who really don't make much of an effort to use sustainable ingredients. Of course, I also know food businesses that use compostable cups and are absolutely sincere about their sustainable practices. But most of the time it just seems gimmicky to me.
I will certainly switch to compostable food service materials at some point, probably before I'm legally required to do so. And I'm sure many of these wrinkles will be ironed out over time. I certainly look forward to seeing what innovations the future will bring, despite my ambivalence.
1 comment:
I am curious what your source is about these cups not being compostable in a home compost system. I have been tearing mine up into small pieces and adding them to my bin and they break down just fine. I'd be interested in learning what the reasoning is behind this claim
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