The Biodegradable Products Institute is focusing on various paths to secure compostable packaging’s future in California through advocacy at both the state and federal levels.

At a meeting last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Standards Board recommended against unanimously against adding synthetic compostable materials as compost feedstocks to the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances. How the board got to that vote was a multi-year process.

BPI petitioned USDA in 2023, seeking an updated definition for compost. NOSB ultimately opted to expand its consultation on the matter and considered adding synthetic compostables to the National List.

USDA determinations on what’s allowed in organic compost would hold notable weight in California. Under California’s 2021 compostables law AB 1201, products labeled “compostable” would have to be an allowable agricultural organic input under the requirements of USDA’s National Organic Program.

With that federal work still unresolved last year, CalRecycle delayed enforcement from Jan. 1, 2026, to June 30, 2027. It’s an especially timely issue, as California anticipates launching its extended producer responsibility for packaging program next year, which calls for 100% of single-use packaging and single-use plastic food service ware sold in the state to be recyclable or compostable by 2032.

BPI’s 2023 petition remains open and waiting for response from USDA, according to BPI Executive Director Rhodes Yepsen. BPI now sees two main paths forward for compostables in California that it will concurrently pursue, he explained.

“Our hope is that based on this consultation being concluded, and all the information we've provided to USDA in the interim over the last few years, that they will decide to publish an interim final rule, or some type of final rule, in the Federal Register and open it back up for public comment,” he said. A USDA proposed rule that aligns with BPI’s request from a few years ago “would solve the immediate problem of compostable products being able to be viable in California.”

There’s no particular timeline in which USDA would be required to respond to BPI’s petition, but Yepsen said that BPI got to meet about the issue this month with USDA’s Dudley Hoskins, undersecretary of agriculture for marketing and regulatory programs.

Still, BPI isn’t putting all of its eggs in USDA’s basket. At the state level, legislation could be introduced in California to remove the connection to the National Organic Program, and instead rely on “more measurable compost quality metrics and compost end markets that make more sense,” he said. Such a bill could amend the current statute defining what can be labeled as compostable.

Furthermore, action at both the state and federal level would be welcome. “We don't need success in both places, but they are also not competing with each other if we did succeed in both places,” Yepsen said. “So the topic, writ large, is our top priority, with efforts split between the federal and the California level.”

There’s also the potential for CalRecycle to grant another AB 1201 enforcement extension, but the hope would be to “figure it out well before that deadline,” Yepsen said.

The broader changes and uncertainty that this has all caused have been “extremely detrimental” to the broader supply chain for compostable materials, Yepsen said. “We've seen bankruptcies in our industry in the last year, and a lot of changes to how investments are being made in the launch of compostable products.”

BPI argues for the importance of clear market signals and policy drivers from government. “This is not how you encourage companies to invest in turning non-recyclable food packaging into compostable packaging,” he said. “Moving things around every few months — it just doesn't work.”

However, Stacey Halliday, partner at Arnold & Porter, sees the possibility for another extension as more likely.

“The decision from NOSB suggests that this is going to be a much longer road than even June ‘27,” she said.

Halliday suggested that, generally, it would make more sense if producers can buy more time and seek narrower approvals, all the while doing a little bit of worst-case-scenario hedging for limitations on compostables in California.

But with everything else going on at CalRecycle to get important aspects of SB 54 off the ground, “Compostability classification, while obviously still in flux and very important for producers that have products that need long timelines for changing labeling, doesn't strike me as something that is going to be an enforcement priority,” she said.