Many organisations have changed their packaging to show a label, as illustrated.

If it has this label, then it is suitable for home composting. However this is the only way to recycle this product as it cannot be recycled with your blue top recycling bin. If you put it into your recycling bin then it will get mixed up with the plastics. In West Sussex, we are able to recycle plastic bottles and containers (pots tubs and trays) but if compostable products find their way into kerbside recycling they end up at our Material Recycling Facility (MRF) as they contaminate the plastics material stream.

And do not put them into your green garden waste bin, if you have one, as this will contaminate the garden waste. The contents of your green top garden waste bin, if you have one, in West Sussex go to produce compost to strict standards set by the British Standards Association, which ensure that the soil produced is certified BSI Standard PAS100 as safe to use and be put back into the land.

Please do not place bioplastic material or food waste into your garden waste bin as this will contaminate the quality of the compost produced and then it cannot be returned to the land and used to produce food.

So if you cannot compost it yourself, or give it to someone with a compost heap, then just place it into your black top rubbish bin.

If the packaging simply says it is compostable, then the same rules apply, apart from the fact that it cannot be composted in a ‘home’ compost heap. This is because your domestic compost heap cannot reach the high temperature required to break it down. It can be composted, but only in an industrial compost process – one that you do not have access to! So they should also be placed in your black top rubbish bin.

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