Environment

Retailers and brand owners should work harder to clarify for consumers whether their plastic packaging is home compostable or suitable for collection by local councils, according to the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee (Larac).

Larac chairman Lee Marshall said the information on compostable packaging about its disposal was not standardised or clear enough for consumers.

"The idea of biodegradable packaging is good, the intention is well made and appears to be right, but if you look at it from a waste management point of view, the infrastructure is not yet there to fully realise its potential," he said.

"In the short term, the home-compostable message would be easy to get across, and some way down the line the infrastructure will be in place for local councils to accept biodegradable plastics."

Bath and North-East Somerset Council has already banned householders from putting biodegradable plastic packaging in with their garden waste for collection because the outlets that the council uses do not have the facilities to deal with it, and it is not easy to distinguish compostable from non-compostable materials.

All plastic packaging collected by the council is currently being composted because the reprocessors can do a "limited amount" of screening, but there is a danger that in the future some of this might "get rejected and sent to landfill".

The council has issued guidelines to help householders, asking them to remove any plastic including plastic windows, handles, sticky tape or other attachments from what they put out for collection.

Asda's packaging buyer Shane Monkman said the chain had decided not to use biodegradable or compostable materials for its packaging, owing to their "huge" performance limitations. They can also contaminate existing waste streams and some are made from GM crops.