How Does A Home Compost Work?
A home compost is a living organic recycling system.
Inside your compost, billions of microorganisms, including bacteria and fungi work together to digest organic materials.
A healthy home compost needs four simple things: organic material, moisture, oxygen and warmth. When these conditions are right, microorganisms get to work digesting food scraps, garden waste and other suitable compostable materials.
Certified AS5810 home compostable packaging is designed and independently tested to be organically recycled in this home composting environment.
When certified home compostable packaging is added to a healthy compost, microorganisms digest the material and organically recycle it into CO₂, water and new microbial biomass.
Composting is a form of organic recycling. Rather than putting food scraps and certified home compostable packaging in the rubbish and sending it to landfill, the home compost allows us to use a natural biological system to manage it at the end of its useful life.
Biodegradable, Commercially Compostable or Home Compostable. What's the Difference?
These terms can be confusing, but there is an important difference.
Biodegradable
Biodegradable means a material can eventually be broken down by microorganisms. But the word alone doesn't tell you how long it will take, what conditions it needs, or what will be left behind.
Certified Commercially Compostable
This means the packaging has been tested and certified to break down in the controlled conditions of a commercial composting facility. It generally needs higher temperatures and specific conditions to be properly processed.
Certified Home Compostable
This means the packaging has been tested and certified for a home compost environment, where temperatures are lower and conditions are less controlled.
AS5810 is an Australian Standard for materials suitable for home composting. Certified AS5810 packaging has undergone testing against requirements for its breakdown in a home compost environment as well as requirements relating to the resulting compost and potentially harmful substances.
That means you don't need an industrial composting facility to organically recycle certified AS5810 home compostable packaging. You can manage it in a healthy home compost.
What If I Can Still See Pieces of the Certified Home Compostable Packaging?
Home composting is a biological process, not an instant one. If you can still see fragments of certified AS5810 home compostable packaging in your compost, it doesn't necessarily mean the process has stopped.
The material may first break down into smaller pieces, increasing the surface area available to microorganisms. Microorganisms then digest the compostable material over time, converting its organic carbon through the composting process primarily into CO₂, alongside water and new microbial biomass.
How quickly this happens depends on the conditions inside your compost — particularly temperature, moisture, oxygen and microbial activity.
This is an important difference between certified home compostable packaging and conventional plastic. A fragment of conventional plastic can simply become a smaller piece of persistent plastic. Certified AS5810 home compostable material has been tested to demonstrate both disintegration and microbial digestion under home composting conditions, as well as meeting requirements designed to ensure the resulting compost is safe for plant growth.
So if some packaging is still visible when you turn your compost, leave it in the active composting system and give the microorganisms more time to continue the digestion process.
Visible today doesn't mean permanent. Organic recycling is a process. It’s a natural cycle, powered by microorganisms:
Use it. Reuse it. Compost it. Organically recycle it. Feed your compost, keep it moist, give it oxygen and let the microbes do the work.
There is no away. We can own our impact at home.
To learn more email enquiries@saltoftheearthpackaging.nz or purchase our products here