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The compostability certification marks: which seal applies where, and who stands behind it?
Marks and reference graphics are shown for identification, academic research and commentary. The image does not grant permission to apply a scheme mark to packaging; consult the issuing body's current eligibility and artwork rules.
Introduction
A compostability seal — the Seedling, the OK compost hexagon, the BPI kneeling figure — is a licensed trademark, displayed under contract and revocable for cause. It is not a summary of test results. That distinguishes these marks from the ownerless chasing arrows and from the self-declared Mobius loop.
The ownership map is nonetheless intricate, and practitioner literature frequently misdescribes it, attributing the Seedling to its certifiers rather than to its owner, conflating the certifier TÜV Austria with the schemes it acquired, or treating the North American and European marks as interchangeable.
The European marks
The Seedling is administered under a tripartite arrangement. It is "a registered trademark owned by European Bioplastics", the industry association, and may be displayed only on products certified to EN 13432 by one of the two certifiers the association authorises, namely DIN CERTCO and TÜV Austria Belgium (European Bioplastics, n.d.). The mark's governance is accordingly divided three ways: the association owns the trademark and sets usage guidelines; the certifiers test, audit and issue licences; and the licensee prints the mark together with an identification code traceable to its certificate. The Seedling asserts industrial compostability to EN 13432, and asserts nothing concerning home composting or any particular facility's acceptance of the item.
OK compost INDUSTRIAL is TÜV Austria's own scheme, certifying EN 13432 conformity for industrial composting conditions. Its history accounts for a persistent confusion in the literature: the scheme was created in 1995 by the Belgian certification body Vinçotte and passed to TÜV Austria upon its acquisition of the label business in December 2017 (Bioplastics Magazine, 2017). Documents, licensee codes and older packaging bearing Vinçotte branding therefore describe the same scheme. The scheme rules are explicit as to the licence's exclusivity: the conformity mark may be applied only to formally certified products, every use must carry the licensee's identification code, and the certifier states that misuse is "systematically prosecuted" (TÜV Austria, 2024a; 2024b).
OK compost HOME, the same certifier's ambient-temperature scheme, occupies a distinct position within the standards architecture examined in the home-compostable article. Rather than certifying against a pre-existing standard, the scheme's own criteria became the source from which national and European home-composting standards were subsequently derived (TÜV Austria, n.d.). Its scheme rules likewise confine the claim: the HOME mark cannot support claims of biodegradation in soil or water, being environments for which the certifier operates separate schemes with separate criteria (TÜV Austria, 2024a).
DIN CERTCO, the certification body within the TÜV Rheinland group, has certified compostable packaging since 1997 and operates its own "DIN-Geprüft" compostability marks alongside its role as a Seedling certifier. It tests against EN 13432, EN 14995, ISO 17088 and the North American and Australian specifications, and it maintains recognition partnerships with BPI in North America, the ABA in Australasia and REAL in the United Kingdom (European Bioplastics, n.d.b; DIN CERTCO, n.d.).
The North American and Australasian marks
BPI certification is the operative compostability mark of North America. The Biodegradable Products Institute certifies to ASTM D6400 for plastics and D6868 for coated substrates, with the fibre specification D8410 also within its framework, and its certification satisfies the statutory compostability definitions that US states, California most prescriptively, have constructed around those standards (BPI, n.d.a; CalRecycle, n.d.). Two features distinguish the BPI scheme operationally. First, its licensing includes a mandatory artwork review: every certified SKU's packaging artwork is reviewed before the mark may appear, a control point that European schemes administer more lightly (BPI, n.d.a). Second, the scheme adopted a chemical requirement earlier than its counterparts: since 1 January 2020 its certification has required total organic fluorine below 100 ppm, the PFAS screen examined in this group's PFAS article, with non-conforming products delisted (BPI, n.d.b). The licence terms are comparable in strictness to those of the European schemes; use of the mark "at any time, in any way" without an active certificate and licence agreement is prohibited (BPI, n.d.c).
The ABA's marks complete the map. The Australasian Bioplastics Association administers verification to AS 4736 for commercial compostability, which carries the earthworm toxicity requirement distinguishing the Australian specification, and to AS 5810 for home compostability. It issues its seedling-derived marks through independent accredited laboratories, and it states that verification does not guarantee acceptance by any given organics collection programme (ABA, n.d.).
Functions of the licensing architecture
Behind the seals sits a common contractual architecture whose functions may be stated explicitly, since they are what distinguish certification marks from the other mark families examined in this theme.
Traceability. Each mark carries a licensee code, whether the "S"-number of a Seedling licence or the OK compost certificate identifier, linking the printed seal to a certificate, a certificate holder and a tested formulation. Under the schemes' own rules, a seal that cannot be verified is an unauthorised one.
Formulation lock. Certification attaches to a specified material and construction. Reformulation, whether through a new ink, an added barrier layer or a change in thickness, voids conformity unless the product is recertified, because compostability is sensitive to composition and geometry. The certificate therefore attaches to the artefact as specified rather than to the brand under which it is sold.
Revocation. Because the mark is a licensed trademark, the owner may withdraw it for failed surveillance testing, for misuse or for artwork violations, without litigation over deception. The remedy available to a private mark owner is accordingly contractual and immediate, whereas the equivalent remedy under public claims law requires proceedings.
Boundary policing. The schemes' rules address at length what licensees may not state: industrial marks may not imply home compostability; the HOME mark may not imply soil or marine degradation; and marks may not migrate to uncertified SKUs. The certifiers thus operate as the first-instance administrators of compostability communication, a role that public law increasingly ratifies by incorporating their certifications into statute.
The relationship between certifiers and standards
A further layer of the map warrants explicit treatment, because the relationship between certifiers and standards is many-to-many, and a mark's meaning is fixed by the scheme rather than by the certifying body.
DIN CERTCO's accreditation illustrates the breadth of the relationship: the body certifies compostability against EN 13432 and EN 14995, the plastics-general counterpart to the packaging standard, together with ISO 17088 and its packaging analogue, the Australian AS 4736, and the North American ASTM D6400 and D6868 (DIN CERTCO, n.d.). One certifier therefore operates against six or more standards and issues several marks, with the consequence that a statement of "DIN CERTCO certified" is under-specified until the standard is named. TÜV Austria's portfolio illustrates the same point across claim families: OK compost INDUSTRIAL and HOME sit alongside the OK biodegradable SOIL, WATER and MARINE schemes examined later in this group, with the scheme rules policing the boundaries between them, the HOME certification being expressly unavailable to support soil or water claims (TÜV Austria, 2024a).
The many-to-many structure has two practical corollaries. First, the informative unit on the package is the specific seal together with its licence code, from which the governing standard and the certificate follow; the certifying body's name alone establishes only that some audited scheme applies. Second, cross-recognition operates at the level of the body rather than of the mark: DIN CERTCO's partnerships with BPI, the ABA and the United Kingdom's REAL scheme (DIN CERTCO, n.d.; European Bioplastics, n.d.b) facilitate testing and the acceptance of data between bodies, but they do not render a Seedling valid where BPI's mark is expected, or the converse. Each market's operative mark remains the one recognised by its statutes and its composters.
The same structure accounts for the mark family's stability across revisions to the underlying standards. Where ISO 17088 is revised, or where the EU's implementing rules absorb the function EN 13432 currently performs, the certifiers re-map schemes to standards without alteration to the marks themselves, so that the seal remains constant while the specification beneath it changes.
Geographic recognition
The marks' geographic validity follows the standards against which they certify. The Seedling and OK compost assert EN 13432 conformity and carry weight where European rules apply; BPI asserts the ASTM framework and anchors US state-law compliance; and the ABA marks assert the Australian standards. Mutual recognition is partial and bilateral, operating through DIN CERTCO's partnerships and through certifiers' acceptance of one another's test reports, rather than systemic. There is no compostability equivalent of a global conformity passport, because the underlying standards diverge, most sharply on heavy metals, as the standards article sets out.
The practical consequence for multi-market packaging is the accumulation of marks: a package sold across the Atlantic may carry Seedling, OK compost and BPI seals simultaneously, each valid in its own territory and each contributing to the on-pack density that comprehension research identifies as a source of consumer difficulty. A certification system that is rigorous within each scheme therefore multiplies marks across schemes.
Two gaps in the recognition map bear on the developments described in the following section. Facility recognition remains unaddressed: no mark guarantees acceptance, and composters' reluctance to receive certified packaging, grounded in contamination screening and cycle economics, means that the marks' operational validity lags their formal validity in every market. Moreover, regulatory incorporation is fragmenting the map further. As California specifies its own certification, fluorine and, from 2027, federal organic-input requirements, and as the EU's packaging regulation mandates industrial compostability for listed formats with prescribed labeling, the marks are being incorporated into divergent statutory schemes whose requirements exceed those of the certifications themselves (CalRecycle, n.d.; Complydex, n.d.).
Incorporation of private marks into public law
The relationship between these private marks and public regulation warrants separate treatment, because it is developing in one direction and is altering what the seals signify. In the schemes' first decades the marks operated as voluntary instruments: a licensee obtained differentiation, a composter obtained screening information, and the state was not a party. The contemporary pattern is one of incorporation, in which legislatures make use of a mature private certification infrastructure by reference, at lower cost than constructing public conformity assessment.
California illustrates the pattern most fully. Its statutory framework does not merely permit certification but effectively requires it, tying lawful compostability labeling to the ASTM specifications and layering state-specific demands, comprising the fluorinated-chemicals restriction and, from 2027, the requirement that products labeled compostable meet federal organic-input standards, on top of the certifiers' own criteria (CalRecycle, n.d.). The certification mark thereby changes character, from a voluntary trademark asserting private conformity into an instrument of regulatory compliance whose absence exposes the seller to state enforcement. The EU's packaging regulation reaches a comparable position from the opposite direction: by mandating that listed formats be industrially compostable and carry prescribed labeling (Complydex, n.d.), it converts what the Seedling and OK compost marks attest from a market advantage into a compliance baseline.
Incorporation has consequences in both directions for the schemes. It reflects legislative confidence in their procedures, since statutes incorporate BPI and EN 13432 certification rather than substitute for them, and it increases their licensee rolls. It also reduces their autonomy: where a state adds fluorine thresholds or organic-input requirements that the standards do not contain, the certifier must either absorb the addition into its scheme, as BPI did with its 100 ppm fluorine screen in advance of most statutes (BPI, n.d.b), or accept that its mark is insufficient for lawful sale in that jurisdiction. The owners of the marks consequently no longer determine unilaterally what their marks are required to mean, and that transfer of definitional authority from industry associations and certification bodies to legislatures is not visible in the marks themselves, whose graphic form is unchanged.
Limits of the assertion
The propositions this family of marks does not establish may be stated directly. An industrial compostability mark does not establish that the item composts at home, the temperature regimes being categorically different. No mark establishes that the item will be accepted by any particular collection programme, or that such a programme exists. No mark asserts biodegradability in soil, water or open environments; the certifiers maintain separate schemes for those claims because the composting evidence does not transfer between environments. Furthermore, the marks assert nothing about the packaging's other environmental attributes, whether recyclability, recycled content or carbon, notwithstanding the generically environmental visual register of the seals. The marks are narrow instruments, and their reading as general environmental endorsements exceeds the scope their scheme rules define.
References
ABA (Australasian Bioplastics Association) (n.d.) Commercial compostable verification programme. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).
Bioplastics Magazine (2017) TÜV Austria takes over OK Compost label from Vinçotte, 8 December. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).
BPI (Biodegradable Products Institute) (n.d.a) Compostability certification. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).
BPI (Biodegradable Products Institute) (n.d.b) Fluorinated chemicals. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).
BPI (Biodegradable Products Institute) (n.d.c) Using the BPI mark. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).
CalRecycle (n.d.) Truth in labeling for compostable products. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).
Complydex (n.d.) PPWR labelling requirements: Article 12. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).
DIN CERTCO (n.d.) Industrial compostable products. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).
European Bioplastics (n.d.) Guidelines for the use of the Seedling logo. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).
European Bioplastics (n.d.b) Member portrait: DIN CERTCO. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).
TÜV Austria (n.d.) OK compost HOME. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).
TÜV Austria (2024a) CS-OK02: Certification scheme, OK compost HOME. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).
TÜV Austria (2024b) ID-138: Graphical chart for the use of logos. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 18 August 2026).
Note on sources and verification
The description of BPI's mandatory artwork review reflects its certification pages' account of the licensing process. The characterisation of composter reluctance to receive certified packaging is drawn from the ABA's own caution and the general policy literature rather than from a quantified survey. The Seedling's issuance arrangements are as stated in European Bioplastics' usage guidelines. DIN CERTCO's 1997 start in compostables certification is per European Bioplastics' member portrait. Recognition partnerships are as stated on DIN CERTCO's pages; their operational depth, that is, whether they extend to mutual acceptance of test data or to full reciprocity, was not independently assessed for this article.
Last verified: 18 August 2026.