Expanding compostable certified product portfolio while celebrating International Compost Awareness Week
We have expanded our compostability certification credentials of biodegradable and renewable fiber-based solutions for food applications, receiving compostability certification from the Compost Manufacturing Alliance (CMA) for our Genuine Vegetable Parchment (GVP) portfolio.
In addition, we recently participated in a voluntary compost trial organized by CMA. Several of Ahlstrom’s food packaging products featured in our line of ‘from Plastic to Purpose’ movement achieved full disintegration in this trial, encouraging the movement towards positive end-of-life packaging structures.
“Community composters play a key role in areas where standard, municipally managed organics processing programs do not exist,” explained Susan Thoman, Founder and Managing Director of CMA. "They can provide an important alternative, and as more community composting develops, CMA has had interest from its packaging partners to learn more and work to help develop standards for compostables that are unique to smaller facilities that work with less technology or mechanical processes.”
“When there are no options available through municipal or full-scale private operations, community composters can provide community scale recovery of organic materials such as landscaping materials, vegetative food scraps, and wood waste in decentralized pockets of a city, and this has multiple benefits,” Thoman continued. “Many community composting programs were started in pea patches to support growing healthy food, and that allows food scraps, grass, and tree prunings to become transformed into a highly beneficial soil amendment that reduces chemical usage, cleans impurities and chemicals from the environment, provides microbial health to depleted soils, and helps conserve water. This creates a better yield in the pea patch or garden and allows community members to keep organic materials out of the landfill and help support urban agriculture development in neighborhoods.”
Continuing to be at the forefront of sustainable product offerings, several of Ahlstrom’s products including Genuine Vegetable Parchment food-contact products which offer multiple functional and sustainability attributes in a single technology are now CMA certified in addition to their existing TÜV Home and Industrial compost certification. CMA and its affiliated partners provide a program of technical review and field testing of compostable products to determine their true feasibility as food related feed stock when shipped to fully permitted industrial composting facilities through several prominent processing methods.
“Our expertise and unique manufacturing capabilities enable us to create value through sustainability for our customers,” said Brian Oost, Vice President of Ahlstrom’s Parchment business. “By achieving this most recent CMA compostability with our market-leading Genuine Vegetable Parchment technology, we offer a full portfolio of compostability certification recognized around the world for best-in-class sustainable products.”
A wide array of Ahlstrom’s products also carry certification through the Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI®). Whether CMA, TÜV or BPI®; these accreditations facilitate the possibility for Ahlstrom customers, whether converters or brand owners, to achieve their own sustainability goals.
For more information about Ahlstrom CMA certified products, visit: https://compostmanufacturingalliance.com/brand/ahlstrom/
To learn more about Ahlstrom’s BPI® certified products, visit: Biodegradable Products Institute