Someone lied to me about a coffee cup. I don't know who yet. That's what I'm trying to find out.
The Cup
The cup came from one of those places that tries. You know the type — oat milk options, keep-cups encouraged, a little sign about sustainability. The disposable cups say "compostable" with a green logo. A seedling. Looks trustworthy.
I took the cup. I drank the coffee. I looked for the right bin.
There were three options: general waste, recycling, and one marked "compostable packaging." Perfect. I put the cup in the compostable bin. Felt that small glow of doing the right thing.
Then I went home and forgot about it.
Three weeks later, I was reading a council waste report — for other reasons, doesn't matter — and I found a line that made me put the document down.
I went back to that coffee shop yesterday. Watched people put their cups in the "compostable" bin. Watched the bin fill up. Watched someone empty it into a black bag.
I want to know: where does that bag go? And who told all these people — who told me — that this was the right thing to do?
Someone made a promise. I want to know if they kept it.
The Promise
If it's the licensed Seedling logo, it means the product is certified as industrially compostable under EN 13432 — the European standard for compostable packaging, created in 2000.1
I'm going to be honest: I expected to find something murky. Vague language. Wiggle room. The kind of drafting that lets lawyers sleep at night.
That's not what I found.
EN 13432 is specific. Rigorous, even. To earn the seedling logo, a product must:
- Biodegrade 90% within six months
- Physically disintegrate so that, after twelve weeks, no more than 10% remains larger than 2mm
- Leave no toxic residue
- Not harm plant growth
The conditions are specified: around 58°C (the standard allows 56-60°C), controlled humidity, managed oxygen, active microbial population. Industrial composting conditions. A facility designed for exactly this.
I read the whole thing. I took notes. And I almost closed my laptop, satisfied. The standard is solid. The cup is certified. Someone built a system.
But something was bothering me. A question I couldn't name yet.
I went back to the standard. Read it again. And this time I saw what wasn't there.
The Gap
EN 13432 tells you exactly what conditions a material needs to break down.
It does not require those conditions to exist.
The certification certifies the material. It does not certify that anywhere exists to process it. A cup can be tested in a lab, pass every requirement, earn the logo — and no one is required to check whether a single facility in the country can actually compost it.
I read that section three times. I kept thinking I was missing something. A cross-reference. A secondary clause. Surely someone had to verify that the infrastructure existed before letting products flood the market with a logo that says "compostable."
No one does. It's not in the standard. It's not required.
The certification was written in 2000. That's over a quarter of a century ago.
New question: did they build the facilities?
The Facilities
I went looking for composting infrastructure in the UK. Not theoretical capacity. Actual, operating facilities that accept certified compostable materials.
According to a report by the REAL Compost Certification Scheme published in October 2022, the number is 24.2
Twenty-four certified composting processes in the entire United Kingdom confirmed they accept compostables.3 That includes liners and packaging — and not all of them accept both. For cups specifically, the number is smaller still.
I checked the date. Checked the source. Checked if I was reading it wrong.
Twenty-four.
There are 317 local authorities in England alone. Tens of thousands of cafes selling compostable cups. Millions of consumers putting them in bins marked "compostable."
Twenty-four facilities.
So where does my cup go?
The Trail
I traced the routes.
Even where food waste collections exist in the UK, the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology notes in POSTnote 606 that the preferred treatment is Anaerobic Digestion.4 AD facilities break down organic matter to produce biogas. Good for food scraps.
AD plants run at around 35-40°C. Remember: EN 13432 requires 56-60°C.
At those temperatures, the cup doesn't break down. It just... sits there. Intact. Recognizable. A piece of plastic in a vat of decomposing food.
What happens next? The operators have to remove it. They can't leave plastic in their output — it would contaminate the digestate. So they screen it out. Filter it. Pull it from the stream.
And then?
Incineration. Or landfill. Depending on what's available.
POSTnote 606 describes how compostable packaging is not generally suitable for AD — it gets removed and sent to incineration or landfill.4
A cup like that can easily end up at a facility that can't compost it. In AD, it's treated as contamination — screened out and sent to incineration or landfill.
The logo said compostable. The bin said compostable. And the system can still send the cup to incineration.
I wanted to know who lied to me. Now I'm not sure anyone did.
The Suspects
Let's go through the list.
The coffee shop? They bought certified cups. They provided the right bin. They probably believe they're doing the right thing. They almost certainly don't know where the bin actually goes.
The cup manufacturer? They got their certification. EN 13432 compliant. The logo is legitimate. They followed the standard. Not their fault the infrastructure doesn't exist.
The certification body? CEN Technical Committee 261 wrote a materials standard. They test whether products can break down under specified conditions. They don't build composting facilities. That's not their job.
The council? They collect waste according to their contracts. If they send food waste to AD, that's the infrastructure they have. They didn't design the system. They operate within it.
The AD plant operators? They process what they're designed to process. Food waste at 35-40°C. They screen out plastics because they have to. They're not villains. They're doing their job.
I went looking for someone to blame.
I found a system where everyone is doing their job correctly.
The Document
Then I found something.
Not meeting minutes from 2000. Not the smoking gun of who knew what when the standard was written. But something more recent. Something that proves the gap wasn't accidental oversight—it was known, measured, and maintained.
In November 2022, the European Commission published a policy framework on biobased, biodegradable and compostable plastics.5 Twenty-two years after EN 13432 was created.
The document acknowledges that "biodegradable and compostable plastics can only fulfil their purpose if adequate waste management infrastructure is in place." It notes that "in many cases, the necessary infrastructure is not available."
The Commission then requested CEN—the same body that created EN 13432—to revise the existing standard. The reason given: the current standard "does not reflect actual industrial composting conditions in EU biowaste treatment facilities."
Read that again.
Twenty-two years after creating a standard for "industrial composting conditions," the European Commission formally acknowledged that those conditions don't reflect actual industrial composting facilities.
The standard certified products for a reality that didn't exist. And they knew. They measured it. They documented it.
And then what did they do?
They requested a revision. Not a recall. Not a suspension of certification. Not a requirement that infrastructure be built before more products are certified. A revision. Of the standard. To maybe better reflect reality next time.
The cups already in the market? Still certified. Still carrying the seedling logo. Still going to AD plants that can't process them.
The Industry
I kept digging.
European Bioplastics—the industry association representing bioplastics manufacturers—published their own position paper on EN 13432 in April 2015.6
The paper acknowledges the infrastructure gap. Directly. In writing.
"The availability of suitable composting facilities varies significantly across different countries and regions."
They know.
Then comes the reframing: "EN 13432 certification provides a reliable basis for identifying compostable products."
Wait. "Reliable basis for identifying" is not the same as "reliable basis for composting." The first is about labeling. The second is about reality.
The paper continues: "Certified packaging can positively contribute to increased organic waste collection."
Can. Not does. Not will. Can. Conditional. Theoretical.
And then this line: "Transparent communication is essential to avoid misunderstandings or greenwashing."
I almost admired the craft. The industry knows there's no infrastructure. The industry knows the standard doesn't reflect reality. But the solution isn't building composting facilities—it's "transparent communication" to manage "misunderstandings."
The misunderstanding being: consumers think "compostable" means it will be composted.
The Facilities (Part II)
I wanted to know: how many facilities actually reject these certified products?
According to a 2024 report from Beyond Plastics, of the 173 U.S. industrial composters surveyed, only 46 accept compostable packaging at all.7
The reason? According to Composting Consortium data, 78% of facilities that reject compostables cited contamination concerns—the certified cups look too much like plastic cups. Operators can't visually distinguish them. So they screen them all out.
Even at facilities that accept them in principle, the operational reality is removal. As the Western Placer Waste Management Authority states: "Compostable bioplastics are bad news for compost operations."8 They note that items certified to EN 13432 or ASTM D6400 "hardly ever" fully degrade in actual facility conditions, and residual fragments contaminate finished compost.
Organic farms—the primary market for compost—aren't allowed under USDA rules to use compost containing bioplastic residue. It's classified as synthetic contamination.
So even when a cup makes it to a composting facility that accepts compostables in theory, and even when it partially degrades, the residue renders the compost unsellable to organic farms.
The system isn't failing to compost the cups. The system was never designed to compost them at scale.
The Choice
Here's what I couldn't figure out: if the European Commission knew in 2022 that the standard doesn't reflect reality, and if the industry knew in 2015 that infrastructure doesn't exist, and if composting facilities have been rejecting certified products for years—why is the standard still certifying products?
The answer is in that 2022 EU policy framework.
The Commission states that biodegradable and compostable plastics "should only be used" in specific applications where environmental benefits are demonstrated—agricultural mulch films, tea bags, food waste collection bags, and "in certain cases" single-use food serviceware.
Should. Not must. Not shall. Should.
The framework is guidance. The certification is voluntary. The infrastructure requirement is absent.
And then I found the line that made everything clear:
"The development of appropriate waste management infrastructure should go hand-in-hand with the increased use of biodegradable and compostable plastics."
Should. Future tense. After twenty-two years.
The standard certified the material in 2000. The infrastructure "should" be developed "hand-in-hand" with use. Meaning: products first, facilities later. Maybe.
That's not an oversight. That's a sequence. An intentional design choice. Certify first. Scale up production. Flood the market. Build infrastructure... eventually. If economically justified.
The cups aren't failing the system. The system is working exactly as designed.
The Theft
There's an older meaning of "compostable."
Composting goes back four thousand years. As National Geographic documents, Akkadian tablets from King Sargon's reign around 2300 BC are believed to include the earliest written reference to compost.9 The Greeks did it. The Romans. Medieval farmers. Your grandmother, probably.
For all of human history until around 2000, "compostable" meant: you can put this in a pile, wait, and get soil. Food scraps, leaves, garden waste. No facilities required. No certification. Just time and biology.
Then we invented new materials—bioplastics, PLA, plant-based polymers—and we wanted them to be "compostable" too. But they needed specific conditions. Industrial conditions. Facilities.
So we used the same word. "Compostable." But we changed what it meant.
The old meaning: your garden, your pile, done.
The new meaning: a facility that may or may not exist, under conditions you cannot provide, in a system that may or may not function, governed by a standard that certifies material properties without requiring processing infrastructure, overseen by a Commission that acknowledges the gap and requests revisions while products continue flooding the market.
Same word. Different reality.
I think that's the theft. Not money. Not property. Trust. The trust that a word means what it says. The trust that when someone certifies something, they've verified it works in reality, not just in a lab. The trust that someone, somewhere, made sure the system was built before they sold us the logo.
That trust was transferred. From "compostable" the four-thousand-year-old practice to "compostable" the industrial certification that requires infrastructure that doesn't exist.
The word did the work. The infrastructure didn't have to.
The Pile
There's a compost bin in my garden. Black plastic thing, council-issued.
I put food scraps in it. Vegetable peelings, coffee grounds, eggshells. I add cardboard when it's too wet. Leaves in autumn. I turn it occasionally.
In about a year, I get soil. Dark, rich, good. No certification required.
The coffee cup can't go in there. The cup needs 50-60°C. My garden doesn't reach those temperatures. My pile is warm, not hot.
But the banana peel from breakfast? That works. The tea bag, if it's plastic-free? Works. The paper napkin? Works.
Composting—the real thing, the ancient thing—still works. For everything that was always compostable. The stuff we've been composting for four thousand years.
It just doesn't work for the cup that stole its name.
The Clarity
So here's where I am.
In 2000, a standard was written that certified materials without requiring infrastructure.
For twenty-two years, products were certified for facilities that didn't exist.
In 2015, the industry acknowledged the gap and called for "transparent communication."
In 2022, the European Commission formally acknowledged the standard doesn't reflect reality and requested a revision.
During all of that: cups certified, logos printed, consumers trusting, bins labeled "compostable," waste sent to AD plants, cups screened out, incineration.
Everyone followed the rules. Everyone did their job. The certification body certified. The manufacturers manufactured. The industry association communicated. The Commission requested revisions. The coffee shops served. The councils collected. The AD plants removed contamination.
The system worked perfectly. Just not for composting.
I went looking for who lied to me. I found something more precise: a system that certified a promise without requiring the infrastructure to keep it, acknowledged the gap in writing, and continued certifying products while proposing that infrastructure "should" be developed "hand-in-hand" with increased use.
That's not a lie. That's a business model.
Certify the material. Scale up production. Let the market create demand. Trust that infrastructure will follow. If it doesn't—well, the certification was always about material properties, not actual composting outcomes. Transparent communication will manage misunderstandings.
Legal. Certified. Composted nowhere.
I almost admire the efficiency.
The bin at the coffee shop is still there. I walked past it this morning. People are still putting their cups in. The cups still say "compostable." The seedling logo still looks trustworthy.
But now I know what that word means. Not what it used to mean—four thousand years of pile, time, and soil. What it means now: certified for conditions that don't reflect reality, for facilities that mostly don't exist, in a system where infrastructure "should" follow demand.
The cup was compostable. In a lab. Under specified conditions. At facilities that, per the European Commission's own 2022 policy framework, don't reflect actual industrial composting operations.
Every word of that is true. Every word of that is insufficient.
That's the gap. Not between truth and lies. Between certification and reality. Between material properties and processing infrastructure. Between what a standard requires and what a logo implies.
I can see it now. And once you see it, you can't unsee it.
The seedling logo means: someone tested this material in ideal conditions and it broke down.
It does not mean: a facility exists to compost it.
It does not mean: your council will collect it separately.
It does not mean: it will actually be composted.
Those were never promised. You inferred them. Because the word "compostable" carried four thousand years of trust, and the certification borrowed that trust without building the system to honor it.
That's the theft. And now you know where to look.