Every establishment is moving to “biodegradable”, “compostable”, “plant based” packaging these days, in a push to move away from disposable plastics.

Which would be great, if compost collection bins were equally as common. But no. The majority of businesses who have switched to biodegradables still expect you to chuck it in the regular trash. Even where I live, Vancouver, Canada, where the use of the compost collection program is mandatory for homes, and you can actually get fined if you don’t, the vast majority of businesses don’t have a compost bin for customers. I’ve literally asked many times, along the lines of “you have biodegradable packaging, but where is the compost bin?” at restaurants, and they had no answer for me. There aren’t compost bins in the vast majority of public places either, like parks, bus/train stations, street sides, malls, etc. Even places controlled by the city that is mandating compost collection for homes.

Yeah, that means your biodegradable packaging is basically useless. Organic material, when dumped in a landfill, at best doesn’t decompose at all, we’ve found decades old newspapers and even food buried deep in landfills, or at worst, decomposes anaerobically and releases methane, a much much worse greenhouse gas than CO2. You can also get groundwater contamination as the “juices” of the decomposing organic material mix with other landfill pollutants and rainwater, and form a toxic liquid called leachate, that seep into the soil and the water table, and the organic component of that can react with and help further leach out other pollutants.

Like, I get it. Compost bins tend to stink, they can attract bugs, and they need to be emptied anywhere from daily to hourly if indoors in a busy place. But, the first two can be solved by doing the latter, and the latter, just suck it up if you actually want to claim to be pro biodegradables.