Following successful trials, Vegware announces today it has received the Compost Manufacturing Alliance (CMA) approval on a wide range of its plant-based compostable foodservice packaging. These highly respected American standards provide official recognition and acceptance of the Vegware products as compostable by both CMA-I facilities and Cedar Grove’s covered in-vessel aerated static pile system. It also allows Vegware to use the CMA “Composter Approved” logo.

Field testing results from CMA, and its affiliated partner Cedar Grove in Washington state, demonstrate that products manufactured by Vegware are acceptable in real world operations and processes. As composting collections and processing grows at the global level, ensuring foodservice packaging works as feedstock in modern large-scale composting facilities is essential. This way, operations at each step of organics recycling runs smoothly, and the result is quality compost created for use in agriculture, horticulture, storm water management and landscaping.

CMA approval is an industry standard that establishes Vegware’s continued commitment to offering certified compostable catering disposables. Customers can use Vegware knowing that when taken to commercial composting, it will break down with food waste to create high-grade compost.

Joe Frankel, CEO and Founder, Vegware, says:

“Composting used Vegware with food waste has a multitude of benefits for the environment. It uses post-consumer waste – diverting it from landfill, creates a product for agriculture, returns nutrients to soil and improves soil structure, which research shows to be essential to fight climate change.”

An additional benefit in using Vegware is that it improves the quality of dry mixed recycling. Once food waste and Vegware share one bin, there’s no cross contamination of food in recycling bins, supporting clean quality sorting of valuable paper and cardboard streams. By employing only compostables in foodservice, this also prevents non-compostables from cross contamination in compost streams, making commercially compostable packaging a true solution to go zero waste in foodservice.

Close to 100 Vegware products are now CMA approved, and the full list can be found on Vegware’s website {https://bit.ly/2M3PfxR} and will also soon be available on the CMA website. Vegware is committed to the CMA standard and are working toward certification for its full range, with large numbers of products currently in testing. In the UK, Vegware’s products are already accepted at 27 different organics recycling facilities, and suitable commercial composting collections are available in around 40% of the UK’s 3,111 postcode districts.