Closed Loop Partners鈥� Center for the Circular Economy (the Closed Loop Center) released a new impact report, highlighting major progress for the U.S. composting industry. Over the course of five years, their Composting Consortium engaged more than 50 stakeholders across the composting value chain, tested the compostability of more than 23,000 compostable packaging units in field, published 11 reports that filled longstanding data gaps on organics recovery, expanded organics recycling access to nearly 240,000 new households, and deployed grant funding to eight leading composters and municipalities across the U.S.
The Composting Consortium, an initiative of the Closed Loop Center, launched in 2021 with brand partners Kraft Heinz, Target, Eastman, Mars, PepsiCo, Colgate-Palmolive and the NextGen Consortium, alongside industry partners including US Composting Council (USCC), Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) and U.S. Plastics Pact (USPP). At a time when nearly 40% of food is wasted and food waste remains a leading source of landfill methane emissions, the Consortium has laid the groundwork for increased recovery of food waste and food-contact compostable packaging across the U.S.
At the time the Closed Loop Center launched the Composting Consortium, interest in compostable packaging was growing, but the industry faced fragmented acceptance, limited real-world data and legitimate operational concerns from composters. The Consortium helped address those gaps by surfacing evidence, creating shared tools and helping stakeholders test assumptions about compostable packaging against operational reality. As the conversation matured, so too did the Consortium鈥檚 work鈥攅volving from a primary focus on research and data to supporting implementation through policy analysis, strategic partnerships and grantmaking.
Throughout over half a decade of work to scale organics circularity in the U.S., the Composting Consortium聽emerged as a key convener, bringing stakeholders together to advance composting infrastructure, unlock critical data, shape policy pathways and align the value chain to keep food scraps and compostable packaging out of landfills and in circulation. Most recently, the Composting Consortium reported a 9% increase in acceptance pathways for compostable packaging through the Composting Consortium Grant Program. The program, led in partnership with BPI and with technical support from USCC, expanded organics recycling access to approximately 240,000 more U.S. households鈥攇iving at least half a million more Americans access to food waste and compostable packaging collection.
What the Report Shows
The Closed Loop Center鈥檚 report on the impact of the Composting Consortium highlights several key milestones of the last five years:
- The Composting Consortium undertook the largest known singular field test of its kind in North America, with more than 23,000 compostable packaging units tested across 10 commercial composting facilities and six composting technologies. The Consortium managed the research, while Resource Recycling Systems (RRS) and Compostable Field Testing Program (CFTP) played critical roles in field support and data analysis. Building on that work, the Consortium donated anonymized data to CFTP to catalyze an open-source database of in-field compostable packaging disintegration data.
- The national Composting Consortium Grant Program, led in partnership with BPI and with technical support from USCC, supported eight composter- and municipal-led projects across the country聽to advance infrastructure, education and expanded access to composting services inclusive of compostable packaging.
- The Composting Consortium released聽first-of-its-kind insights on contamination聽at 10 composting sites, including research showing that conventional plastics remain the leading source of contamination and cost for composters, accounting for more than 20% of operating expenses on average.
- The Consortium developed聽and shared practical tools for the field, including municipal guidance for launching and scaling organics programs, an investor roadmap that outlines recommendations for targeted investment into the U.S. composting industry, and a first-of-its-kind framework for designing extended producer responsibility (EPR) policies that include compostable packaging and composting.
Taken together, this work helped clarify where compostable packaging can support organics recovery and what conditions are needed for success.
A collaborative Effort Across the Field
The impact of the Composting Consortium on the organics industry was made possible through extensive collaborations across stakeholders, including composters and municipal partners who opened their sites and communities to testing and implementation; brands and material innovators who stayed engaged through technical, operational and policy complexity; and researchers, nonprofits and industry groups that helped build alignment across differing perspectives.
鈥淥ver the last five years, the Composting Consortium helped bring greater clarity to a complex and often fragmented part of the organics landscape,鈥� said Caroline Barry, Project Lead of the Composting Consortium at Closed Loop Partners. 鈥淲e are deeply grateful to the composters, municipalities, industry groups, and brand and material innovation partners who engaged in this work with openness and rigor鈥攅ven when the answers were not simple. Together, we helped build a practical understanding of what it takes for compostable packaging and food scrap recovery to work in practice. That progress is worth celebrating, and it also points to the importance of continued collaboration to strengthen the systems that make organics recovery possible.鈥�
What Remains Ahead
Five years of research and collaboration聽resulted in significant progress, but also point to the work ahead. Contamination, uneven facility acceptance and consumer confusion remain persistent barriers to compostable packaging recovery and organics circularity.聽The Consortium鈥檚 findings show that while compostable packaging is an important solution to food waste mitigation, it is best understood as one part of a broader circular material strategy for organics鈥撯�揷lear design, labeling, aligned acceptance standards, policy, collection systems and facility readiness are all critical to holistic success. This has been one of the initiative鈥檚 most important contributions to the industry: helping replace broad claims with more practical, system-level understanding.
“The results from the last five years show what is possible when stakeholders across the value chain come together to solve complex, system-level challenges.聽Closed Loop Partners remains committed to advancing solutions for pressing material challenges, building systems to keep valuable materials in circulation,鈥� said Kate Daly, Managing Partner at Closed Loop Partners. 鈥淲e will continue to build on the work of the Composting Consortium, bringing together key stakeholders and sharing critical insights on organics.鈥�