Companies Producing Biopolymers for Packaging

Agreed, it’s textbook greenwashing. Just like those classification numbers you see on plastic disposables decorated with a recycling arrows. If you throw it in the sea and the bugs don’t eat it then it’s bad for the environment, it doesn’t matter what it was originally made from. The percentage of compostable cutlery you get from takeaways that actually makes it into an industrial composter is vanishingly small. It’s only purpose is to make people feel more comfortable with throwing it away. I buried some of the stuff in my garden 4 years ago and dug it up the other day. Looks exactly the same. Sure I didn’t use a compost heap (let alone an industrial one) but if the compostable plastic doesn’t deteriorate at all then it’s no good.

It’s the marketing driven aspect of plastic packaging that should be easier to solve through legislation. Plastic windows on paper packaging so you can see the food inside, come on! This obsession we all have with fruit and veg cleanliness when our immune systems need the practice is nonsense.

Also, making plastic from plants can even become a bad thing. Look at what happened to the rain forests in Indonesia when palm oil was pushed as the next big thing, even as a source of bio fuel.

Well one label says "HOME OK compost" and then another one says "commercially compostable only" so idk?

I used them in our kitchen in a small countertop bin. Our kitchen and yard waste are picked up by the city and composted in high heat composters. If I was still doing backyard composting I doubt they would break down.

> There is something very perverse about producing plastics from food

I carry ~10kg of groceries home in ~50g of plastics.

If all of the earth's plastics were made from agricultural outputs, it wouldn't put a meaningful dent on our food supply.

Eating less meat would.

It makes more sense to do this for the relatively low volume of plastics than when food stocks are used to produce fuel like alcohol and biodiesel.