Posted by Kevin Vollquartz
On its own, "biodegradable" tells you almost nothing. Given enough time and the right conditions nearly everything biodegrades, so the word only becomes useful when it comes with two extra pieces of information: under what conditions, and within what timeframe. "Compostable" is a stronger claim, because it is tied to test standards that define both. Most other green wording on a pack falls somewhere between the two, and a fair amount of it is decoration.
What does "biodegradable" actually mean?
It means micro-organisms can break the material down, and that is the whole of it. No timeframe, no environment, and no promise that the breakdown ever finishes instead of stalling halfway into fragments. A bag can be described as biodegradable while taking decades in a hedgerow and producing microplastics on the way.
The gap between the word and the reality is what regulators have been chasing. In a sweep run in late 2020 and reported in January 2021, hosted by ICPEN and led by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority with its Dutch counterpart, 4 in 10 of the sites checked appeared to be using tactics that could be considered misleading, among them wording like "eco" or "sustainable" with no explanation attached, and own-brand eco logos tied to no accredited organisation. Members had analysed almost 500 websites at that point, across sectors including clothes, cosmetics and food. Those figures come from that one sweep and have not been updated since.
So a bare "biodegradable" is worth very little until someone tells you the conditions. The useful version reads more like "certified home compostable to TUV OK compost HOME" or "breaks down in an industrial composting facility under EN 13432". Those you can go and check.
Is "compostable" a better claim than "biodegradable"?
Yes, provided it names a standard or a certifier, because compostability is defined by testing rather than by adjectives. The European benchmark for industrial compostability is EN 13432, and TUV Austria's OK compost INDUSTRIAL scheme certifies against it across four areas: biodegradation, disintegration, ecotoxicity and heavy metals content. A material has to clear all four tests before it is certified. OK compost HOME is a separate scheme, and TUV says plainly that it is not based on a standard. The programme sets out its own technical requirements.
Bare "compostable" with no scheme behind it is weaker. It usually means industrially compostable, which is a genuinely different environment from a garden heap, and it is often unclear whether the manufacturer has had anything tested at all.
What is the difference between home and industrial compostable?
Temperature, mostly, and how steady that temperature is. TUV Austria puts industrial composting at 55 to 60°C, the sort of managed heat a commercial facility produces, and says a product certified only to OK compost INDUSTRIAL should not go into a garden heap. A garden heap runs cooler and swings around with the weather, which is why OK compost HOME exists as a separate and harder certification. TUV Austria defined its home-composting requirements in 2003, and later national and European standards were built on top of them.
The practical consequence: an industrially compostable bag put into a home compost bin may still be recognisably a bag a year later. The bag has not lied to you. It has been put in the wrong environment. That is why our compostable zip bags carry home compost certification, and why the zip matters, since the bag gets reused before it ever reaches the compost caddy. We go into the industrial versus home problem at length in our piece on whether compostable bags really are compostable.
Does "plant-based" tell you anything useful?
It tells you where the raw material came from. Safety, biodegradability and end of life are separate questions that the phrase leaves untouched. Plenty of plant-derived materials are perfectly safe and perform well; some plant-derived plastics behave in landfill much like petrochemical ones. Crude oil, for what it is worth, is also of biological origin.
The same applies to "natural". It is not a regulated term in cleaning products, and it says nothing about whether a formula works or how it affects aquatic life. Judge the ingredient list and the certifications.
Which eco labels are worth trusting?
The ones run by an independent body against criteria that are published. These are the ones worth recognising on sight.
- The EU Ecolabel is the EU's official voluntary ecolabel, awarded per product group and assessed across a product's whole life cycle.
- The Nordic Swan Ecolabel is the official ecolabel of the Nordic countries, with criteria published per product group.
- TUV OK compost HOME and OK compost INDUSTRIAL certify that a material composts in a garden heap or in an industrial facility respectively.
- The seedling logo signals conformity with EN 13432 for industrial compostability.
- FSC comes in three variants, FSC 100%, FSC Recycled and FSC Mix, and covers where wood and bamboo material comes from. We unpack them in what FSC-certified bamboo actually means.
These schemes publish registers you can search. TUV Austria runs a Database of Certified Products on its OK Certification site, and the European Commission runs the EU Ecolabel Product Catalogue. Type in the brand. If the pack claims a certificate and the register has no record of it, you have your answer. In the US, ASTM D6400 and BPI certification do the job of EN 13432 and the seedling, and the Federal Trade Commission's Green Guides do the job of the Green Claims Code.
What should make you pause is a leaf, a globe or a green tick with a brand's own wording wrapped around it. No scheme name, no standard number, no certifier: that is packaging design. Displaying a sustainability label with no certification scheme behind it becomes illegal in the EU from 27 September 2026, for the reasons set out below.
A quick reference for the aisle
Most of these terms tell you less than they appear to. This is the short version to keep in your head at the shelf.
| Term on the pack | Backed by a standard or certifier? | What it actually tells you | What to look for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Biodegradable | No, not on its own | Microbes can break it down at some point, in some conditions | A named environment and timeframe, or ignore it |
| Compostable | Only if a scheme is named | Usually means industrially compostable | EN 13432, the seedling logo, or OK compost INDUSTRIAL |
| Home compostable | Yes, where certified | Breaks down in a cooler garden heap, not only in a hot facility | OK compost HOME or an equivalent national standard |
| Plant-based | No | The origin of the feedstock | Separate evidence on ingredients and end of life |
| Natural | No | Nothing verifiable in cleaning products | The ingredient list and any independently certified ecolabel |
| Plastic-free | No, but it is checkable | A factual claim about materials you can inspect yourself | What the product and its packaging are made of |
| Recyclable | Partly, through local rules | That the material can technically be recycled somewhere | What your council or local recycling programme actually accepts |
Why are the rules on green claims tightening?
Because enough shoppers were being misled that it moved from marketing into consumer protection law. The CMA published its Green Claims Code in 2021: claims have to be truthful, clear, substantiated and complete, with nothing important left out. What changed in April 2025 is the enforcement behind it. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 came into force, so the CMA can now decide for itself whether consumer law has been broken and issue penalties directly, instead of litigating every case through the courts. Since then it has published eight new or improved guidance documents, including short explainers on the Green Claims Code.
The EU rules apply from 27 September 2026. That is Directive (EU) 2024/825 on empowering consumers for the green transition, which member states had to write into national law by 27 March 2026. It bans generic environmental claims that are not backed by proven environmental performance, aimed squarely at wording like "environmentally friendly" or a bare "biodegradable", and it bans displaying a sustainability label that is not founded on a certification scheme or authorised by a public authority.
For a shopper, the useful consequence is that vague green wording is now a risk signal. A company confident in its evidence tends to name the standard.
How we handle labels at Vove
We explain the terms we use and describe what things are made of. We are a small founder-run company making plastic-free household products. The dish brush set has an FSC-certified bamboo handle with replaceable heads and sisal bristles. The compostable zip bags are certified home compostable, PFAS-free and BPA-free, and the 140-bag compostable zip bag set covers four sizes.
Where we cannot substantiate something, we leave it off the pack. If you want the longer history of how "biodegradable" and "compostable" drifted apart, start with our explainer on biodegradable versus compostable, then have a look through the household range with the questions above in mind.
