Susan Thoman 0:00 How are you? Nate Seltenrich 0:01 I'm doing well. Thanks so much, appreciate you taking the time. I'm excited to talk about composting. Susan Thoman 0:09 Well, excellent. I love talking about composting. So all good, all good. Nate Seltenrich 0:14 So I got your name from Camilo. Susan Thoman 0:19 Oh, Camilo Ferro. Nate Seltenrich 0:21 Yes, Ferro. I spoke with him yesterday about his perspective. But the reason I wanted to talk to you is that the story I'm working on, on single use food packaging, is going to try to evaluate the whole big picture of disposables in terms of source and feedstocks. And maybe carbon footprint associated with those, and then looking at potential chemical risks with plastic additives and PFAS and other chemicalsm, and then also looking at end-of-life and disposal. And, you know, biodegradability. Susan Thoman 1:06 Sounds like a great story, one that needs to be written. Nate Seltenrich 1:09 Yeah, and we're setting it all in the context of the pandemic and the increases in the use of these materials and these products. Susan Thoman 1:19 Good, that's good. That's good. Nate Seltenrich 1:21 So yeah, there's two things that he mentioned at least that are; one thing he mentioned maybe and one thing I wanted to talk about as well. So the thing that he mentioned that I actually wasn't familiar with until this story, and really until he mentioned it, is that as awareness of PFAS chemicals being used in a lot of these compostable fiber bowls and plates has gone up over the last, what seems like the last, year, a lot of attention has been called to that and brands have started to make statements about phasing it out. But what I didn't know is that composters are also concerned about this and are potentially rejecting certain products. So I wanted to hear about that, how that's done. I know that the BPI certification is involved, as well as screening, but how do composters evaluate individual materials? Maybe just tell me a little bit about that whole thing so I can follow up. Susan Thoman 2:33 Sure. Well, I think a little bit of background of what CMA does might be helpful to answer that first. So CMA was established in 2017. I worked for the big composter over here in Seattle for many years when a lot of these big campuses here; like you do down there; and we have big campuses, school systems, universities that all wanted to use compostables. The composter I worked for began to take them on and a lot of the lab standards that BPI certifies to which includes bio-degradation, disintegration, metals, all this stuff that makes sure the products are safe. These are the standards that say they're designed to be safe, and we accepted those standards at the facility, but over time, what we found, and there's reasons for this, is that they weren't really disintegrating within the timeframe of the active composting cycle. So here you had companies sourcing materials at that time at a premium; a compostable version, maybe buying it because they were serving 30,000 lunches a day. Composting is a great option here in Seattle, cost wise, as well as environmentally. But what was happening is they weren't disintegrating at the facility adequately. So here you had people paying a premium for a product only to have it landfill by the composter. So we started a program there where we started doing our old field tests to certify, to our own acceptance standards, if you will, once those initial lab standards were met. So fast forward to CMA. The company just kept getting phone calls and composters calling, cities calling, because this appeared to be a problem in the gap between lab standards and field standards. So really, our mission is testing materials for the disintegration value at various types of processing facilities across the US. So it involves precursors to what we'll accept. So, to answer your question, we accept the STM standards or BPI certification; they have to meet those standards first in the lab. And again, those are tests for the safety of the material and the disintegration test, they do as a predictive test. It's lab controlled. Composting is a little more dynamic; you've got loaders, and screeners and heavy equipment but it's a manufacturing process so we've always followed the BPI standards for what we accept, lab-tested, and then when BPI announced their total foreign limits on materials, we adopted the same one. The only difference is that we needed time to go through and email every single client we've ever had to get their flooring test to verify that. So we're finishing that process now. But in all intents and purposes we have not accepted any PFAS materials over a 100 parts per million pouring in since the beginning of last year. So we mirror what BPI does. The only differences is that we're still removing some on the list now, but our deadline is December 31st. Hopefully that all makes sense. Nate Seltenrich 5:53 Yes, so you're working with like, more institutional clients so you're able to kind of verify upfront what materials they're using. It's different from a curbside situation where there's sorting and screening that happens after pickup. Susan Thoman 6:14 Yeah, right now where composters are, that is a really important message to get out there, so it's helpful that you're doing an article on it. If you think about designing compostables, they're all designed in product manufacturers working in supply chains. So the supply chain makes these compostable products, they get their STM certifications, they go out to market; but once they're out to market; and I like to divide this into residentially collected; to your point with the concerns that you have as well as us about the takeout going home with people now. In commercial, where you have a closed loop system like a Google campus, or an Amazon campus or a university campus, most of the focus and the acceptance of compostables are only in those closed loop foodservice operations currently. Okay, so why is that? A, it's a closed loop system. If you have a hall or are bringing materials in every day from that campus, assuming there's no COVID and people are back to work; and you know, it's easier to go back and say, oh you threw your aluminum cans in by mistake today, you got to fix that once you accept those products, residentially, the whole education system and how to tell the public what's okay and what's not okay. It is a huge job. So right now, what we do at CMA is that we have multiple facilities that use CMA as their compostable expert. So we really are the agency for, I mean we're up to I think, 17 to 18 sites now across the US. In addition to people using our list, we are kind of their department that handles all these questions about what's in it, and what do we need to do to get more information and how does the field test and so we're kind of like their departments. So when you say what composters do to deal with this, a lot of them are depending on CMA. Because we're kind of; they're so busy making compost and they understand the composting industry operates on pretty thin margins. I mean it's got a business plan and a lot of their contracts are long term, so things change drastically within the course of a contract, or COVID happens now and you have all these new contaminants that they haven't seen before. People are throwing wipes and Amazon boxes and masks. All these things are things that have to be dealt with by the composters, at their expense. So we're constantly looking at the compostable and food service products at dine-in locations. And then we're seeing more and more interest in compostable bowls at the grocery retail level, which there really isn't a plan for right now, in my opinion; there really isn't a plan for how we how we might deal with that just in terms of volume. I don't know if that's confusing. Nate Seltenrich 9:18 No, that's helpful. So I mean, do you have a sense of composters that... or like the larger residential haulers that do have, residential service? Like for instance, and I'm in the North Bay Area, and we have Recology, which also works in San Francisco. They're pretty green and progressive, but they're also among those that don't accept bio-plastic cups in compost. So that's just one thing, and I know it's so confusing for many consumers. Do you have any sense of how the industry deals with like bioplastics and also this issue of PFAS and BPI certifications.? It just seems like a monumental task to screen things out like that, things that we know are problematic. Susan Thoman 10:24 You mean, what the composting industry is doing? Nate Seltenrich 10:28 Yeah, well you talked about the institutional accounts and those more closed loops where it might be easier to keep tabs on which products they're purchasing and putting into the compost. But the residential haulers don't really have that level of control. So I'm just curious if you have any sense of how that gets handled there. Susan Thoman 10:56 I can't really speak for what different haulers do and I mean, I've talked quite a bit with Republic and waste management before, because remember, composters are really easily attached to those haulers. So in other words, let's say I'm in the city of whatever, and I have a commercial collection; you know, commercial collections getting done at the schools, with either my own trucks or someone else's. But the curbside programs are generally contracted programs with the city. So if I'm a composter that has a contract with either a hauler or a city directly to take curbside, it's usually promulgated in the contract what is acceptable. So the first line of defense would be in your contract. It probably spells out whether you can take as compostables or not, or whether you can take; like years ago when I was helping do the contracts here in Seattle with the entities bringing us materials, they would say food sold paper is accepted. Well, in 2004, we didn't know food sold paper, that there isn't hardly any 100% paper. In other words, we didn't really know, because we were composters, that coffee cups had a polyethylene lining and we didn't know that your takeout food pack or your takeout food containers had 'pol'. So we had a lot to learn. And that's why we started going with the ASTM standards, BPI, certification, and then doing our own field tests. So this is an evolutionary thing. But I guess I don't have a good answer for what are we doing residentially now because, you know, like with COVID and takeout, it's still relatively new. A lot of the trends and composting really don't show up for a while or, or they show up and then planning on what would be our focus comes along later. We make lists for the facility so we try to get people to use our lists of what's accepted. If you go to our website and see our map, you hover over our city, and that's their list of what's accepted. So honestly, our end product is list-making for facilities. Residentially though, I think it's fair to say just in my interactions with hauling companies that do residential curbside, we need to come up with a plan. We need to help each other understand how to keep these materials out. I do also know if it's a contracted limit to not have packaging, and that's probably been going on for a long time. So if there's packaging that comes in on a residential contract, they could probably reject the loads now and probably have been for years, unrelated to COVID. But I think those contracts kind of serve as the limiting factor in a residential program. So I guess the key question is, with COVID; just a thoughtful question, contracts now include, contracts now being encouraging composters to take residential packaging which I don't know... I'm not sure if that's something that they're going to require. Nate Seltenrich 14:13 Because there's probably there's more of it out there and maybe more more pressure to to compost it. Susan Thoman 14:23 I think because it's a new thing for composters to deal with packaging. Here's the things I see that hurt my stomach. So maybe you've got a take-out office that went to the CMA list and said these are all good for the composter, we can take them all. So we're going to serve all this food and take it out and they're going to take it home. So the whole family eats their dinner, throws it back in a plastic bag that it was delivered in and throws it in the compost. You know there's just so many; when you have maybe a closed loop, a limited number of closed loop entities like businesses, maybe 4000 of those or 8000 of those, but you have a million residents, that's a different animal. It's a different animal and how you create a system that will work for everyone. So I guess my point is, those residential programs are generally contract-driven. Myy guess is that they're not allowed in most cities. That type of material is not allowed now in most cities, but is it getting into bins? Yes. And are composter screening out? Yes. I mean, they have screen processes for their materials and things like that. But is there a system for you know, a hauler in a compost or in a city and consumers? That's what we need to build. I get a lot of different phone calls asking, how do we put this together, so that if takeout becomes a norm, which I believe it (will); well, I'm here in restaurants are retooling their whole operations now around that, how do we align with that and make sure we have a solid system that can reach out to the individual parties out there on what's compostable and what's not, and what can go in your bin and what can't. A lot of funding, a lot of education plans need to be developed for that whole residential system, and I believe they'd have to really be driven by the haulers that are contracted with the cities. It's still so relatively new since it just happened this year, but I believe you're going to hear a lot more conversations about this, and there are other regulations that are outlined non-recyclable, non-compostable that'll be part of the consideration. So, you're right, there's a lot and I have no easy answer, but those are observations and aspects that I think would be the ones to consider. And if you have, haulers you can talk to that accept packaging, maybe ask them what we do. We have a couple that you see at CMA because they're attached to our facility. So, we're really trying to do a holistic system approach, where the composter is attached to the hauler and the hauler is attached to the city. The supply chain designs these great products, but we have to make them work and the solid waste system as composters, which means we need to talk to everyone. And every jurisdiction is different just like in San Francisco, it can be different than Los Angelas; in Seattle, it's different than Tacoma. So then you have the lack of harmonizations around all these initiatives to work together, But I do think there's a lot of conversations about solving the problem, having a good system for it, and ultimately how do we educate the masses in understanding the importance of keeping compost clean, not putting recyclables in composting and down cycling, having good recycling streams. Just an FYI, composters are getting these Amazon boxes now because people are ordering. Now we're done side cleaning Amazon boxes which should be going into recycling. So there's things like that always; wwe need a thousand screwdrivers to tighten up all these loose parts on it to figure out how we take this system to the next generation of what it needs to be in light of some of these cultural changes. Nate Seltenrich 18:22 Yeah really interesting. And what I know, at least from my perspective; I heard about the issues with bio-plastics like the PLA cups in particular and related types of plastic cups and plastic linings and then it seems that the PFAS issue has become prominent now also with more awareness and the BPI. Do you have a sense on which of those, I mean, when we're talking strictly about "compostable food packaging", which one of those is a bigger issue, if you can compare them? Or are they just both among the many challenges that you've had? Susan Thoman 19:14 I think PFAS, bcause it's a chemical. We certainly don't want PFAS materials coming in. You know, it's in a lot of things, but we want to stop that now so it doesn't become a problem. I mean, the good news is; I don't know if you know this but Washington state, the state I live in, was the first to pass legislation limiting PFAS and foodservice packaging. If you're interested in that legislation, I can send you a link. Nate Seltenrich 19:44 Yeah, I heard about that. But if you have something handy that I can reference that can be helpful. Susan Thoman 19:51 Yeah. So you know, that's a hard one. But yeah, so of course PFAS. The benefits of compost far outweigh the current concerns of the levels, but I think it's arresting it now so it's not a problem in the long term; that is kind of my opinion. So, again, upstream, we've already got the limits on what we'll take in, BPI does what we do, so those products can't come in anymore. So we're moving in the right direction there. But plastic's still a problem in any solid waste stream. We don't want regrettable alternatives. We don't want to see materials move to; and you know that the PFAS issues are really in certain classes. It's molded fiber and like grease treated papers and bags and things. There's a lot of things that are PFAS free that are out there that are great. So it's really those classes of materials that are problematic. By the way, I would add that the facility here did a lot of tests on you know those molded fiber products over many, many years, and didn't have a lot on the acceptance list to start with, because they didn't break down really well. And we didn't know if it was because of the treatments or whatnot. So we didn't have a lot of those to start with on the CMA list, just because they didn't disintegrate very well. And over years and years of testing... Nate Seltenrich 21:27 Yeah and the problem with the plastics is still, like you said in the beginning, they may not break down as rapidly as the rest of the food scraps or organic material. Susan Thoman 21:41 Or bio plastics like PLA? Honestly, we've had great results with PLA. Yeah, the issue with PLA that we see is that it looks like PET. So we have our own system, we're developing for color marked requirements, and we actually started a program like that in Seattle in 2007. So San Francisco was using green stripes, and we were using brown stripes in Seattle. So that was our program, with the thought that brown is the color of soil. So if you have a brown piece of cutlery, and it is completely biodegradable, or it biodegrades 95%; if you got 5% of a brown piece of cutlery, you know, material, it looks like soil in the end. If it's green, it looks like green plastic, but it might be biodegradable and compostable. So we were working to keep it a little bit more concise, that we're trying to use color markings to help distinguish those PLA items in the marketplace or encouraging manufacturers to do that. And another piece of legislation our state passed is the Washington labeling legislation. We were part of writing that, and it does specify easily- and readily-identifiable materials. So one example of that when they started using compostable kitchen bucket bags. Here, in the 2006 or 2007, we had done a lot of testing and we get these bags approved, but they were all different colors. So we went to the county and said look, you know, the only way the composter, sitting up on a loader 10 feet in the air, is going to know that that's compostable is if it's the right color, if he's knows that color works. So we got all the manufacturers; King County helped us to get all the manufacturers to use the same harmonized color green and that's why you see green bags, not just the compostable version on the shelves in the grocery stores here. But we now have legislation that regulates what produce bags can be if they're not compostable, they can't be green or brown. So we've used color marking in the compostable labeling legislation in Washington state as part of our way to deal with the issue that you're talking about. PLA works great in our field test and windrow and in vessels; a lot of the tests we've done and I'm.... Again, understand straight PLA; I'm talking about clear PLA once you get into formulations and everything, they can differ a lot, but straight PLA, like the clear glasses and things, the clear cups and things, we have had good luck with. But the marking is an issue so I guess that's the bottom line of my comment. They're going to have to be marked in a way that a composter at his facility or her facility, as well as consumer can easily identify that as compostable in their city or their community. Nate Seltenrich 24:41 So, just one other thing. The reason that some maybe residential haulers don't accept them; I mean, I just recall hearing this issue that they can just gum up the work, so to speak. Susan Thoman 25:00 Understood. So if you're going straight to a compost facility, what ends up on your floor ends up in your process right? So you have to screen out whatever doesn't break down which is hugely expensive. If you're a [murf] already doing recyclables you have all these sorting systems. Well, composters don't have that. So I do understand issues on both sides where if you're a recycling center and you get PLA cup versus a PET cup and that cross contaminates your PET stream now and downgrades that, I completely get that. On the flip side, if you're a stadium and you sourced all compostables but there was a special on PET beer cups and somebody didn't know any better and they bought the beer cup, now you've got a PET cup coming into composting. And if there's no way to differentiate that that beer cup is a PET cup versus a compostable one, it challenges both sides. So there's definitely backing up from what we try to do to resolve that. There's absolutely an issue in cross contamination on both strings. So one of the things we promote unrelated to residential is going all compostable. If you have a complete composting program, don't use PET cups with compostable containers, make sure it's all compostable, and I always use the Taco Time model. They're a quick-serve restaurant chain in Seattle, where they made the big jump to go all compostable so they only have one bin and at least, for a composter, being very self-serving when I say this; for a composter, that's the best system. So I would say the same for a recycling system. You know, there's a lot of people that will source compostables. I've visited sites where they source compostable cups and stuff like that and they have strong recycling programs at the facility. And I'll say, well you know, why are you buying a compostable cup if you're only using doing recycling here. So recycling is a great investment option, If you don't have food, if you're not serving food, you need to go with best and highest use, in my opinion. I think the ideal compostable system is a dine-in operation where it's all compostable. You have a direct relationship, either with your company or your hauler to that site, and you have a lot more control over what comes in and out because you have a daily or weekly relationship with them. I think once you get out to residential, your story is really important because we're kind of at a new chapter where I think we have to figure out what the vision overall is for all these systems. And it's not easy. Nate Seltenrich 27:56 Yeah, and that maybe, I haven't spoken with Recology yet, but maybe I should. The confusion is that the source of their direction to put PLA cups into the waste bin, as opposed to composting, even though we do have a residential compost collection. Well, that's very interesting. Thanks so much. I hadn't even thought of the two different sorts of systems that are operating there, and that helps me a lot. The residential versus the more institutional. Okay, well, thank you so much. It's been really nice to learn more about this part of the story, and we'll try to tie it all together. Susan Thoman 28:48 Okay. Well, I look forward to seeing it and reading it. And I'm glad you're talking to a lot of different voices and people. You know, it's a big issue. I think packaging companies are really struggling, like, where do we invest next? So one of the things I've noticed with COVID, just as a side note, is I think a lot of folks, maybe in the product design phase, are looking more at their longer term strategies now because maybe they're home, they can't meet or they can't be in the office. And so I think we're getting a lot more inquiries about the feasibility of compostables; where do I invest in the next best thing for my business; I'm trying to develop sustainable packaging. So the conversations are big, and they're multiple, and they're vast. So it's very timely, that you're doing this because I think it will help inform a lot of the designers and product manufacturers. I think it's important to talk about what the real issues are, you know, and what their opportunities might be. At the end of the day, we all want to create a zero waste program. And that's what we've got to remember more than anything, and, you know, compostables are a great carrier of food scraps and that's what we'd like to put in the compost and the coffee grounds and things so very important work that you're doing and I appreciate you reaching out to CMA for our perspective. Nate Seltenrich 30:04 Thank you so much. Yeah, and it's interesting that you mentioned investors because that's, in addition to a kind of more traditional journalism piece that will be produced through this, we're also pretty producing a kind of secondary informational package for investors. I guess, kind of targeting that audience, and designers to be able to evaluate some of the more innovative products... Susan Thoman 30:37 I love that. That's awesome. Yeah, but we're connected to a lot of them. A lot of people are doing research testing too, because they don't want to spend 5 million bucks developing the next great compostable item only to have composters say they don't want it. So that's a real benefit. We do a little preview research on how their products actually work. Nate Seltenrich 30:59 Yeah, okay. Well, I'll let you know if I need any thing clarified from what we discussed, but otherwise, so just make sure that you see the final product. Susan Thoman 31:11 Okay, Nate, well, thanks again for reaching out and good luck. Nate Seltenrich 31:15 Thank you, Susan. I appreciate it. Thanks for your time.