At this year’s Global Pouch Forum, Rodrigo Castaneda of TIPA Compostable Packaging and Jared Damman of WildKind Packaging presented a Converter’s Perspective on “Convenience and On-the-Go—Why Compostable Packaging is the Solution.”

Shortly following their presentation, I sat down with Castaneda and Damman to get some additional insights on the advantages of compostable packaging.

Given the wide range of compostable packaging applications, I was curious as to why they chose “convenience and on-the-go” as the focus of their presentation.

“These are the harder-to-manage materials in the flexible packaging space. Regardless of how we tackle them, smaller formats are harder to sort in a MRF [Materials Recovery Facility],” said Castaneda, who is VP & General Manager-North America at TIPA. “Most of these materials that we’re talking about are in direct food contact. Food contact in a package then creates contamination—that contamination can hinder the recyclability of those materials.”

That’s the advantage of compostable packaging: Instead of being processed at a MRF, it can go where the food waste goes.

“When you take a chip bag and you go for a hike and you have a snack at the top of the mountain … somehow, it might fall out of the bag,” said Damman, who is VP of Packaging at WildKind. “If it’s a traditional plastic, that’s going to stay there until somebody picks it up. It’s not an ideal composting situation either. However, there is a better chance that once it does get buried … it might break down on its own.”

Castaneda clarified that he and Damman are not promoting littering. Still, certain situations highlight the advantages of compostability.

“Even if you have the right waste bin to place that package or whatever is left over, some people are consuming these at the beach. Some people are consuming these in open spaces,” Castaneda said. “Do they have to really worry about where that’s going to end up? It’s less of a burden.”

Check out the entire interview above.