Compostable vs. Biodegradable vs. Recyclable

A couple of years ago, Michael Oshman found a full line of foodservice packaging that claimed to biodegrade in landfills more quickly than any other plastic on the market.

“It was like, ‘This is the product that we've been waiting for,’” says Oshman, who has been executive director of the Green Restaurant Association (GRA) since he founded the organization 19 years ago. “It was so convincing.”

But then he sent it to his team for analysis and found its claims were false.

If carefully worded assertions can fool someone who has been entrenched in the green restaurant movement for almost two decades, how can the rest of the industry hope to understand the complexities of terms such as “compostable”, “biodegradable”, and “recyclable”?

With that question in mind, QSR talked with several experts to decipher the implications of each term—and the impact that sustainable packaging will have on your bottom line.

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