US compostable labelling: the rules actually in force

The federal position

At federal level, compostability is regulated through the law of deceptive advertising, not through a marking duty. The Green Guides at 16 CFR part 260 treat an unqualified compostable claim as requiring competent and reliable scientific evidence that the item will break down into usable compost in a safe and timely manner in a home compost pile or device. Qualification is required where the item cannot be composted at home safely or in the same time as other materials with which it is composted, or where composting facilities are not available to a substantial majority of consumers. The Guides are interpretive. They inform enforcement under section 5 of the FTC Act. They do not themselves prescribe wording, colour or a certification mark.

The technical content of a compostability claim is supplied instead by consensus standards, principally ASTM D6400 for compostable plastics and ASTM D6868 for plastic coatings on paper and other substrates, both directed at aerobic composting in municipal or industrial facilities rather than domestic composting. Home compostability is addressed by separate certification schemes, of which the OK compost HOME programme is the one named in Californian legislation. Conformity is established in practice by third-party certification, in the United States most commonly through the Biodegradable Products Institute, and it is the certification, rather than any federal instrument, that state statutes then incorporate by reference.

That structure has two consequences for the analysis of any particular package. The first is that the substantive content of a compostability claim is set by a private standard whose revisions take effect through the certification scheme rather than through legislative amendment, so that the applicable edition of the standard, and the scope of the certificate held, are determinative in a way that the statutory citation alone does not disclose. The second is that a claim lawful as a matter of certification may nonetheless be actionable as a representation, because certification addresses the disintegration and biodegradation behaviour of the material and not the availability of a facility that will accept it. The state statutes described below respond to that gap in different ways: some by prescribing wording, some by prescribing colour, and some by prohibiting terminology outright.

California

California restricts the sale of plastic products labelled "compostable", "home compostable", "biodegradable", "degradable" or bearing wording of similar implication. An industrially compostable plastic must satisfy the referenced ASTM specification together with the statute's additional conditions, which include limits on organic fluorine and requirements connected to the treatment of the organic-waste stream. A home-compostability claim requires recognised certification to the OK compost HOME standard; generalised biodegradability language does not substitute for certification.

Compostable plastic bags are subject to presentation rules of unusual specificity. Such bags must be readily and easily identifiable as distinct from non-compostable bags, must display qualifying certification information, must not bear a chasing-arrows resin identification or recycling symbol, and must carry prescribed green colouring, banding or prominent "compostable" wording. The condition concerning allowable synthetic substances, which ties the Californian regime to the National Organic Program's list, has been extended to 30 June 2027. CalRecycle publishes implementation guidance, and enforcement proceeds through public enforcement routes and the general remedies available for misleading labelling under Californian consumer-protection law.

Washington

Chapter 70A.455 RCW requires that a product marketed as compostable meet an accepted technical standard or its equivalent, display a qualifying certification logo and use the word "compostable" where practicable. Food-service products and film bags must be readily distinguishable from their non-compostable equivalents by specified visual treatment: green, beige or brown colouring, striping, tinting or wording. The converse duty is imposed on products that are not certified compostable, which may not imitate that appearance. State and local authorities may investigate and impose civil penalties, the enforcement provisions having become operational on a staged timetable culminating in July 2024.

Colorado

The Compostable Product Labeling Act took effect on 1 July 2024. A covered product represented as compostable must be certified and must be readily and easily identifiable as such, while a product that is not certified may not employ labels, colours or designs that mimic the appearance of compostable products. The statute's stated purpose is the reduction of contamination in organic-waste streams, and enforcement authority is assigned through the state's consumer-protection framework. The certification and distinguishability conditions are expressed in terms that do not correspond exactly to the Californian provisions, with the consequence that artwork compliant in California does not follow automatically as compliant in Colorado.

Minnesota

Minnesota Statutes section 325E.046 prohibits the labelling of a covered plastic product as "biodegradable", "degradable", "decomposable" or in similar terms unless an ASTM standard specification exists for the claimed term and the product is certified as meeting that specification by a qualifying non-profit entity. A product represented as compostable must meet ASTM D6400 or D6868, or fall within the treatment provided for items comprised only of wood or only of paper without coatings or additives. The section further requires that a product labelled compostable be clearly and prominently labelled, on the product or on its smallest unit of sale, to reflect that it is intended for an industrial or commercial compost facility, in legible text size and font. Certification by a qualifying non-profit is required for both biodegradable and compostable claims from 1 January 2026. The mandatory facility statement is materially different in content from an unqualified leaf device or the word "compostable" standing alone.

Narrower state provisions

Maryland, at Environment Article section 9-2102, prohibits the terms "biodegradable", "degradable" and "decomposable" on plastic products. The prohibition is not absolute as to compostability: subsection (b) permits "compostable" where the product meets ASTM D6400 or D6868 and the Federal Trade Commission's guides, and permits "home compostable" under the OK Compost HOME scheme, and subsection (c) excepts soil-degradable agricultural mulch film. The provision therefore combines a terminology prohibition with a certification route, rather than operating as a prohibition alone. It establishes no prescribed mark, and it does not displace the more detailed regimes described above where a product is sold in those states as well.

A widely repeated Connecticut requirement with no located statutory basis

Connecticut is frequently listed among the states requiring that produce bags offered to consumers be certified by the Biodegradable Products Institute, on the authority of that Institute's own legislation tracker, which attributes the requirement to a 2019 enactment. The bill the tracker identifies is Senate Bill 584 of 2019, An Act Concerning the Distribution of Compostable and Biodegradable Bags by Food Retailers. Legislative records show that bill referred to the Joint Committee on Environment and carried no further; it received no public act number. Searches of the General Statutes conducted for this article located no corresponding codified provision in chapter 446d or chapter 446e, and section 22a-246a excepts produce bags from the checkout-bag provisions without imposing any certification or labelling condition on them.

The requirement is accordingly recorded here as unsupported. That is a statement about what the searches conducted for this article located, and the position would change if an enacted provision were identified; but a compostability labelling obligation should not be attributed to Connecticut on the present material. The Connecticut provisions that do bear on packaging labelling are the plastic bottle identification code at General Statutes section 22a-255b and the beverage container deposit marking at section 22a-244(b).

Cumulative effect and enforcement

The statutes regulate manufacturers, suppliers, distributors or persons selling covered products, each according to its own definitions, and the identity of the regulated party accordingly varies between them. None of the four principal regimes guarantees that a certified product will be collected in any particular locality. Certification establishes conformity with a technical specification; it does not establish facility access, and a facility-access qualification may therefore be required under general advertising law even where certification permits use of the technical term.

For packaging distributed nationally, the operative constraint is the conjunction of the state requirements rather than any one of them: the most demanding applicable certification standard, the most demanding wording and colour conditions, and the prohibitions on symbols and terminology imposed by states that regulate presentation negatively. Searches conducted for this article did not locate any litigation challenging the California, Washington, Colorado or Minnesota mandates, which distinguishes this area from the recyclability-claim provisions examined in the SB 343 injunction article, where the corresponding Californian statute is preliminarily enjoined.

Primary sources

• California Public Resources Code §§ 42355–42358.5
• California Public Resources Code § 42355.51 — Open source
• CalRecycle, plastic products and compostable labelling guidance
• Revised Code of Washington, chapter 70A.455 — Open source
• Colorado SB 23-253, Compostable Product Labeling Act
• Minnesota Statutes § 325E.046 — Open source
• Maryland Code, Environment Article § 9-2102
• Connecticut Senate Bill 584 (2019), An Act Concerning the Distribution of Compostable and Biodegradable Bags by Food Retailers — referred to committee, not enacted
• Connecticut General Statutes §§ 22a-246a, 22a-255b
• Biodegradable Products Institute, US legislation tracker — Open source
• Federal Trade Commission Green Guides, 16 CFR part 260 — Open source
• ASTM D6400 and ASTM D6868

Note on sources and verification

The identification of California, Washington, Colorado and Minnesota as the states imposing the most prescriptive regimes follows the Biodegradable Products Institute's legislation tracker cited above, checked against the statutory citations given.

An earlier version of this page recorded Connecticut as having legislated in 2019 to require that consumer produce bags be certified by the Biodegradable Products Institute, on the tracker's characterisation and without a confirmed public act number. That statement has been withdrawn. The bill the tracker identifies, Senate Bill 584 of 2019, was referred to committee and not enacted, and no codified provision to that effect was located. The section above sets out the position and its limits. The Connecticut legislature's own bill-status pages could not be retrieved for this article, and the finding of non-enactment rests on a legislative-tracking service together with the absence of any codified text.

The Maryland description was also corrected. It previously stated that section 9-2102 operates without reference to a certification route; subsection (b) in fact permits "compostable" on an ASTM D6400 or D6868 basis together with compliance with the Federal Trade Commission's guides, and permits "home compostable" under OK Compost HOME, and subsection (c) excepts soil-degradable agricultural mulch film.

The Minnesota provisions, including the industrial-or-commercial-facility statement and the 1 January 2026 certification condition, were confirmed against the statutory text at the URL given. The Washington and Colorado descriptions rest on the statutory citations and secondary summaries rather than on retrieved section text; the Colorado bill page did not resolve for this article and is listed without a URL.

The extension of the National Organic Program allowed-synthetics condition to 30 June 2027 is confirmed only through CalRecycle and BPI reporting and secondary analyses, and is recorded here as such rather than as a proposition verified against a Californian statutory or regulatory text.

The statement that no litigation was found challenging any of the four principal mandates is established negatively: it records the outcome of searches conducted for this article and is not evidence that no proceeding exists.

Monitoring points are any amendment to the Californian synthetic-substances condition before 30 June 2027; the first enforcement actions under the Colorado and Washington regimes, which would indicate how the distinguishability provisions are applied in practice; any Minnesota guidance on the scope of the qualifying-non-profit certification requirement now that it is operative; the addition of further states to the BPI tracker; and any Federal Trade Commission revision of the Green Guides' compostable-claims section, which would alter the federal substantiation baseline against which the state regimes operate.

Last verified: 19 August 2026.