The way you dispose of recyclable, compostable and biodegradable products can make all the difference for the environment.

Even the most well-intentioned innovations can have unintended consequences for the environment. Take, for instance, compostable plastics, or “bioplastics,” made from plant products like corn, potatoes or sugarcane. Cups, plates and utensils made from bioplastics are meant to be composted and converted into a useful soil additive. But if they instead wind up in a landfill or recycling bin, they can wreak havoc.

Even composting bioplastics can be problematic if it’s not done properly. In order to break down, such products require specific conditions, including high temperatures. Most backyard composting setups cannot reach those temperatures.

“Typically, the size of the pile is not enough to generate the kinds of conditions that you’re going to require,” said Darby Hoover of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Bioplastics will break down in a backyard pile eventually, she said, “it just takes longer and smells worse while you’re doing it.”

Such products should be processed in large-scale, industrial composting facilities. But the average consumer does not necessarily have access to such a facility. Instead, they often toss compostable plastic products in the garbage can. They then go to the landfill, an oxygen-starved environment not suited to break things down.

“If the product is destined to go into the landfill, whether or not it’s biodegradable doesn’t really give it an environmental advantage,” Hoover said. “Most landfills are not designed to break things down.”

In fact, researchers have found paper bags and banana peels that sat in a landfill for more than 50 years without biodegrading, she said. What’s worse, if and when a bioplastic does break down in a landfill, it will generate methane—a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide.

The way biodegradable materials are produced also affects their environmental benefits. Some are made from petroleum-based plastics that are stitched together with plant-based adhesives. “They will break down, but just into little teeny tiny pieces of plastic,” Hoover said.

Some biodegradables require large amounts of fossil fuels to produce, and the resulting pollution far outweighs the environmental advantages of biodegrading. Still others are made from corn—a crop with its own array of agricultural consequences. “Buying something biodegradable doesn’t tell us what it’s made of,” Hoover said.

And that’s not all. Another problem is the lack of a consistent definition for the parameters of biodegradability. Almost anything, given enough time, will break down, but that doesn’t mean it’s beneficial for the environment.

There are efforts afoot to develop biodegradable and compostable products without the environmental drawbacks. Pepsi, for instance, has announced plans for a new bottle made from plants like switch grass. Hoover said the company hopes to eventually manufacture bottles made with residues from its own food production.

“What we would love to see, both for biofuels and for bioplastics, is an increased reliance on agricultural waste—in other words, the parts of the crop you don’t eat,” Hoover said. That would include materials like residue from sugarcane production or straw.

Some organizations on the Seacoast are attempting to provide their own local solutions to composting issues. EcoMovement Consulting & Hauling, based in Portsmouth, currently provides composting services to upwards of 50 area businesses. EcoMovement provides those businesses—mostly restaurants—with composting receptacles and hauls the compostable waste to Seacoast Farms in Fremont, a commercial facility with the capacity to process even tricky materials like bioplastics.

Rian Bedard, who co-founded EcoMovement almost two years ago, said he plans to launch a curbside residential program this fall. For $6 a week, the company will provide clients with composting bins and haul off the contents once a week, just like curbside recycling or trash pickup. Close to 70 clients have already signed up in Portsmouth, Dover and Kittery, Maine, Bedard said. Next spring, those customers will get a free bag of compost they can use in their yards or gardens.

The service will help solve a composting conundrum for local consumers. Although a growing number of restaurants now offer compostable cups, plates, utensils and packaging, takeout customers might not have anywhere to dispose of such items except the trashcan. With curbside pickup, though, they can simply toss compostables in a bin similar to—but separate from—recycling. EcoMovement provides a list of products and materials that can be composted.

Even for people who have backyard composting piles, the curbside service provides an alternative for things like bioplastics. Bedard noted that most backyard piles only reach a temperature of about 80 degrees, while the commercial facility in Fremont can easily reach 110 to 115 degrees.

“A lot of people try to experiment at home with this and then they realize pretty quickly that it’s not going to work,” Bedard said. “Some people don’t have space and they might not have the time to manage their piles. For them, (the curbside service) makes them feel good and it’s easy and it’s pretty affordable, as well.”

The University of New Hampshire is trialing an expansion to its own composting program at Kingman Farm in Madbury. For years, the school has been composting food scraps from its dining halls, as well as manure from its equine and dairy programs. More recently, certain retail food locations on campus, such as the UNH Dairy Farm, have begun using plant-based cups and packaging.

According to UNH farm manager John McLean, the school initially ran into some problems incorporating the new items into composting windrows.

“We were having issues that they don’t incorporate into the rows well, they don’t break down as fast, they blow around,” he said.

Another issue is that the plant-based items are not certified organic, which means the resulting compost can’t be used on organic farmland at UNH.

For now, McLean is only putting the plant-based items in a couple of the eight-plus windrows at UNH. Depending on how it goes, they may expand the program in the future. Rick MacDonald, assistant director of UNH dining, said the school pulps all compostables before adding them to windrows, which helps them incorporate more smoothly. However, neither he nor McLean was aware of whether higher temperatures were needed to break down plant-based materials.

“We pulp all of it, so it’s not as much of an issue,” MacDonald said.

Ideally, Bedard said, municipalities like Portsmouth would provide composting services for their residents. He once lived in San Francisco, one of several major cities now offering curbside composting pickup. 

“I would really love to see the city of Portsmouth have a facility to process stuff like this, but it seems to be something that’s only happening in bigger cities,” he said.

According to Peter Britz, environmental planner for Portsmouth, the city has long considered adding composting services, but they currently lack the space for such an operation.

“The question is, where would we do it?” Britz said. “There is some interest at the city level, but we can’t even explore the opportunity until we get some space.”

Of course, the city could have its compostable waste hauled to a commercial facility, as EcoMovement does. Portsmouth already has its recycling hauled to Waste Management in Rochester, which separates the cardboard before sending the rest to another facility in Massachusetts to be sorted.

About a year ago, Portsmouth moved to single-stream recycling, allowing residents to recycle paper and cardboard in the same bin as plastic, glass and aluminum. Public Works director Steve Parkinson said it’s not yet known whether the program has increased the city’s recycling rate, although he expects it has.

But the recycling stream is another place where compostable products like bioplastics are not welcome. Since bioplastics have a different molecular structure than traditional petroleum-based plastics, they can hamper or contaminate the recycling stream.

Shelley Dunn, a spokesperson for EcoMaine, said that hasn’t been an issue. EcoMaine is a non-profit waste management company based in Portland, Maine, with a processing facility for single-stream recycling. She said the company works hard to educate people about what can and can’t be recycled. As a result, they have not encountered problems with biodegradable materials.

“It really isn’t a problem because there’s so little of it,” Dunn said. “If there is a problem, it’s negligible at this point.”

Even if a non-recyclable item does get in the stream, she said, the facility has a complex system for making sure it is removed. EcoMaine’s recycling facility has a series of conveyor belts, screens and magnets used to separate various materials. Plastics pass under an “optical sorter” that uses an ultraviolet light to detect their density. Some plastics are directed into a jet of air that propels them into a chute for baling. Others fall onto a separate conveyor, where they are sorted by manual workers.

“We do have pre-sort people who look for odd things that aren’t supposed to be there, because the machine can’t pick up everything,” Dunn said.

But the most effective way to make sure compostables, recyclables, and trash don’t get mixed together is to increase awareness and make it easier for people to dispose of their waste properly. Rian Bedard is confident that composting programs will continue to spread as the issues are addressed.

“Composting is complicated. There’s a lot of moving parts to it. It’s not something you can just jump into,” Bedard said. “There’s a lot of work that has to happen, so I think that’s why you’re not seeing it happen overnight.”