UKC

How do you dispose of these wrappers which magazines come in?

They do not degrade in the compost at all, and are a bl**dy nuisance.

They seem to degrade best if you leave them under the sink or in an underused drawer for a few months, then used to contain something damp and messy you decidedly don't want to spill all over the kitchen floor

Maybe I should get into plants and bushes and use them to line plant pots?

I don't find they compost well either.

Generally now they just go in the general waste, which gets incinerated.

Can they go with other soft plastics like carrier bags? They often have collection points at supermarkets

I haven't found any of the bags/wrappings which are said to be compostable rot down at all.

I have read, though this was just a comment on social media, that they do compost but only on an industrial scale. I assume that means they are shredded and mixed with other stuff and left for ages, or put in a fast composter.

Dave

Yes, as you say they are technically compostable but not in your standard home compost set-up. Wonderfully inconvenient.

Radio 4 initiated a survey into how easily they compost, unfortunately, I never heard the results.

Results from my composter are variable, some do, some don't. The green ones tend to compost better than the black ones but still leave a residue of shredded plastic. 

There's some informed discussion of 'biodegradable' and 'compostable' bags here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001n8nb
(In this programme, in the context of the bags people buy to hang dog turds up in trees with.)

The bottom line is that it's greenwash - they are compostable, but only through a large-scale industrial composting process, definitely not in your compost heap/bin at home and not a process that (almost) any of us have any access to.  The advice was to completely ignore their claim to be compostable as pure marketing BS.

Put them in the green wheelie bin?

Yes, and I bet the companies that produce them try to gain a few eco-brownie points because they make bags that are allegedly compostable.

Dave

Don't think so.  Not my green wheelie bin anyway - the local council specifically ask people not to put bags (of any kind) in there.  The garden waste is composted in open heaps, much like a domestic compost heap only bigger, and a 'compostable' bag will only break down into smaller bits of plastic in there.

The upshot of the radio programme I linked to is that there's nothing the vast majority of consumers can do with a 'compostable' bag that will lead to it being successfully composted.

no, they aren't recyclable and will contaminate the load

My council provide bags for kitchen waste collection. I presume those are this 'compostable' variety.

I think the difference there is that where councils do collect kitchen waste it won't be going into open compost heaps, unlike most garden waste collected at the kerbside.  (I don't think that's allowed.) 

If it's composted it'll be done in an 'enclosed' system at much higher and more consistent temperatures, or it'll be going into an anaerobic digester.

I know. My (unwritten point) was that maybe compostable bags might go in the kitchen waste collection.

Are we talking about these corn starch (?) bags like the ones the BMC's Summit arrives in?

If so then they're disposable in the same way as the council supplied green bags that I can put my kitchen food waste in (cooked or uncooked) that can then go in the Brown (in Prestwich) bin. Obviously that's not heading towards a domestic composter, but I believe it does end up as compost.

Greater Manchester did have a more sophisticated process for garden/kitchen waste recycling but even after spending many £m it never worked properly so they reverted to a simpler "composting" process. 

My kitchen waste collection specifically says not to put compostable bags in it.

To  conclude: These bags are a waste of time.

The only place to dispose of them is in general waste....

Which does not give me a good feeling.

Places like co-op have soft plastic recycling, I think they can basically take any plastic which isn't recyclable domestically. I can't see why it couldn't go in there, the website certainly doesn't say not to. 

Assuming that these bags do break down eventually then going to landfill is not a bad option.

I do wonder whether we are creating issues for the future with our current waste strategies. Previously landfill was dilute, everything went in. Landfill is becoming increasingly concentrated, which could lead to future problems.

I think all the large supermarkets have this. My Mrs has got into this - filling up the place with bags full of apparently recyclable packaging rubbish that weighs about 10g. Whilst I haven't got a problem with the concept, it does seem like loads of effort for the weight of actual material being recycled.

If your council supplies kitchen waste bags, then you can put them in your green* bin as the council are using a composting process that will break them down. In Greater Manchester, they use In-Vessel Composting (IVC) which is not very high tech, but seems to cope find with 100% compostable bags.

Otherwise, general waste.

*whatever colour your garden and food waste bin is.

There is a recent study on this from UCL:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsus.2022.942724/full?&ut...

the conclusion of which is that "home composing is not an effective o environmentally beneficial waste processing method for biodegradable or compostable packaging in the UK."

I know the green waste recycling companies swear about them. They have the same properties as a normal plastic bags (strong, light and stretchy) and they gradually get wrapped up around the moving parts of their shredding and screening machines They are a time consuming nightmare to remove which causes lots of machinery down time and probably the main reason why some green waste companies won't allow them in their bins. 

I guess the main upside is that if they end up in the countryside or landfill they well break down much faster and more completely than a plastic bag. 

Be terrible for the environment if the supermarket soft plastic collection was contaminated before being driven across Europe in a lorry and incinerated in Poland.  Or just run round the M25 a few times then burned in London.  Or just stacked up outside a warehouse in Turkey for ever.

https://www.everydayplastic.org/blog/2023/4/4/qb9xp8ka4slgcbw376n7fgqxzzrhr...

Will they?  I'm not sure that's a given at normal temperatures in landfill and certainly not blowing about in the countryside - in those circumstances I think it's really just another plastic bag no better than a supermarket carrier bag, livestock feed bag, crisp packet or flaccid helium balloon.

Well, I was thinking longer term. Even if it takes 10 or 20 years to finally decompose in that sort of environment, its got to be better than a plastic bag that will be with us forever.  

I see these compostable bags like those flushable wet wipes that don't dissolve and just block up the sewer systems. All well and good for the people selling them, but a nightmare for the people who have got to deal with them.

Compostable plastics almost always require industrial composting at high temperatures. Some products are marketed as "home compostable" but there is no widely accepted standard as far as I'm aware. 

For dog poo bags I always used ones with the Vinçotte ‘OK Compost Home’ logo. I never actually tried them in the compost bin, but they felt like they would breakdown pretty quick. 

I don't know that they'll decompose even in that time if they're not exposed to high temperatures, other than to break down into smaller bits of plastic.  Genuinely don't know btw - but it doesn't seem safe to just assume they will.

The other question that we tend not to ask about 'biodegradable' plastics is what they degrade into.  I mean I'm sure it's great news if they're not plastic bags any more, but that doesn't necessarily mean that whatever they've turned into is something we want in the soil.  (Or in compost.)

Yes!  "Flushable wet wipes" is a contradiction in terms, but the people selling them don't care so long as they're turning a profit.  Sorting out the blocked sewers is somebody else's problem. 

"Biodegradable" dog poo bags are just the same really - it's like they're tacitly giving people permission to just chuck them under a hedge when nobody is looking.  Obviously most folks won't, but plenty will - and of those a lot will be kidding themselves it's ok because the bag is biodegradable.

Interesting comments about biodegradable/compostable plastic.

All the  compostable magazine covers we get along with the odd compostable doggy bags  go  in our compost heap.  We have two biggish (1 cubic metre) )  home made compost bins.  One gets used and the other (full one) is left over winter and spread over the garden in spring.   Green garden waste, grass cuttings, some newspaper, leaves, sawdust all gets put in the one bin for a maximum of one year.  Over that time I'll fork the heap with some irregularity.  The bins are on clay soil and open topped to allow rain to get in.  Very, very little doesn't compost.  The last year or so  I've also tried composting cellophane which is plant based cellulose.  It takes longer.  The bits which rot are in the centre on the bin/s, bits on the side of the bins get  less moisture - or dry out,  I will find some still as a plastic.