A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) advisory board—the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB)—has recommended that compostable products be evaluated on a case-by-case basis through the NOSB petition process in order to modify the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances (National List). The Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) submitted a petition to USDA in 2023 requesting that the phrase “plant and animal materials” be replaced with “compost feedstock” that meets the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) composability standards. This would have allowed synthetic compostable polymers in organic compost. NOSB thus did not support BPI’s petition for rulemaking to update the definition of compost thus paving the way for USDA to act on the petition.

NOSB considered the issue at its January 13-14, 2026, meeting. (Minutes from the meeting are available here.) The Board based its decision on a commissioned technical report and public comments, and suggested that compostable synthetic feedstock could contain undisclosed additives and the potential for higher levels of PFAS in compostable packaging. However, NOSB said that it remains open to evaluating substances on an individual basis.

BPI published a rebuttal to NOSB’s 2025 Technical Report on Compostable Materials (available here) in October 2025. BPI claimed that the NOSB technical report “reveals a lack of basic understanding of biodegradation and the science of compost and cannot be used as the basis for sound decision making.” BPI also outlined scientific errors and omissions in the report.

The National List decision has implications for California, which prohibits companies from labeling a product as “compostable” unless it is classified as an “allowable agricultural input” under USDA rules. (For more information on California’s “compostable” requirements, see the packaginglaw.com article, California’s Compostable Labeling Requirement Delayed, Varying Compostable Requirement in State’s Laws Questioned.)