The Bigger Picture: Compostables and Landfills
While we’ll focus on tattooing here, it’s worth noting that using certified home compostables supports a much larger goal: diverting organic waste from landfills. Did you know food scraps are the number one material sent to landfills? Did you know they are the third largest source of methane emissions in North America?! Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and reducing it is crucial in fighting climate change.
Certified home compostables help because, unlike regular plastic, they break down safely without releasing microplastics or harmful chemicals like PFAS into our soil. Here’s a great article from BPI that explains how home compostables reduce landfill waste and methane emissions.
Tattooing and Single-Use Waste: A Tough Reality
In tattooing (and other beauty and healthcare industries), many single-use products are non-negotiable for health and safety: disposable gloves, surface barriers, and more. Unlike metal tubes, these can’t be sterilized for reuse. Even with every reusable tool imaginable, a lot of single-use waste remains with products like:
- Nitrile, Latex & Vinyl Gloves
- Adhesive Bandages & Tape
- Dental bibs, Drape sheets and other plastic sheets
- Bottle bags, Pen covers, Clip cord sleeves & Machine bags
These thin, often plastic products break down into microplastics in landfills, contaminating soil and water. But when made from certified home compostable materials, they don’t contain harmful chemicals and degrade without adding microplastics.
The Composting Challenge and Opportunity
Yes, in landfills compostables still produce methane, but so do food scraps — and food scraps dominate landfill emissions. Removing compostables from landfills won’t significantly reduce methane. However, if more people use home compostables and adopt backyard composting, it could encourage cities to expand composting programs.
In tattooing, we can’t compost contaminated waste at home for safety reasons, but we can advocate for industry-wide composting solutions. We believe that 80% of tattoo waste could be composted if more facilities accepted bioplastics. Why don’t more facilities accept bioplastics, you ask? The answer often comes down to contamination from regular plastics. Composting facilities spend millions removing non-compostable plastics because many compostables look like regular plastic or are greenwashed. This is another way the fossil fuel and plastic industries complicate progress.
Here is an inspiring case study to see how Italy mandating compostable bags significantly improved their composting rates.
The Root of the Problem: Oil and Plastic
Plastic’s worst environmental damage happens during production, not disposal. Extracting oil and manufacturing plastics release vast greenhouse gases and threaten ecosystems. By simply reducing plastic use and investing in alternatives, we can make a huge positive impact.
Divesting from oil and plastics is one of the most powerful actions we can take. It’s about stopping the cycle of making the same harmful mistakes and choosing better paths forward.
A Call for Collective Action and Reflection
People are often so focused on finding the perfect solution that we miss the many better choices available. No choice is impact-free, but together, small changes add up.
We’re curious: what solutions or dreams do you have for making our industry more eco- and socially conscious? Does it mean limiting plastics, pushing for policy change, fundraising, or something else? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!
A Hopeful Parallel: Compostables and Solar Power
The fight for compostables reminds us of the early skepticism around solar power. For years, solar was dismissed as too expensive or inefficient, largely due to lack of investment after oil prices dropped in the 1980s. Now, countries like Spain and China are leading the way in solar energy, while the US and Canada play catch-up.
Just like solar, compostables need investment, innovation, and community support to thrive.
Thanks for engaging in this important conversation. There’s so much more to explore about waste management, compostables, and the influence of big oil — but this is a meaningful start.
