Recyclable or Biodegradable or Compostable

What names/terms are used on our processed food packaging.

Nowadays the consumer is demanding the use of packaging that protects the environment and is Recyclable, compostable or biodegradable! Does everyone know what the difference is between each of these terms and what does it mean to you? Everybody knows that they’re all terms for some kind of renewable source.

Reuse or landfill? or be reused before they compost and become dirt? or maybe we reuse the dirt? Sometimes it can be downright confusing! In this blog post I am going to explain these terms we hear; recyclable, compostable and biodegradable.  

Recyclable

Out of all the sustainability related terms around today recyclable is probably the single most used and distinct of the three.

Definition: “to make something new again” which is pretty simple.

The idea of the term recyclable is to find another use for something, whether it’s the same object or its restoring it to its original state and reusing it. This term applies to most materials that you see like metals, plastics, and papers and is sometimes used as the "catch-all" term for a sustainable product.

Compostable

The word compostable is on the opposite side of the spectrum from recyclable where rather than reusing something you’re letting it break down. Defenition: “a decayed mixture of plants that is used to improve the soil in a garden.”

The definition itself is pretty self-explanatory, compost is made almost completely of plants that can be broken down into something called “Humus”. This is then distributed to dirt to add new nutrients to create good soil for growing new plants.

Compostable plastic behaves much like other compostable materials in the sense that it needs a catalyst (i.e.heat) to break it down into compost.

Biodegradable

The final name used, biodegradable, is similar to compostable but with a few distinct differences.

Definition: “capable of being slowly destroyed and broken down into very small parts by natural process, bacteria, etc.”

While this does sound similar to the definition of compostable, but notice the absence of plants.

Biodegradable objects can be much more than plants, it can be papers, boxes, bags, and other items that have all been created with the ability to slowly break down until they’re able to be consumed on a microscopic level.

This is one area you’re probably seeing a lot of manufacturers going with their products and overall it’s a pretty successful push.

So, in the battle of recyclable vs. compostable vs. biodegradable you can now correctly, and efficiently, identify each term independently.