Evaluating methods for safe composting of biodegradable sanitary pads in different environments

After evaluating the biodegradation of our products and ingredients at the lab-scale through standardized tests in our Biodegradation, Compostability and Eco-toxicity (BCE) department, we evaluate how our products would behave in real-world, end-of-life situations. This is where our Biotech department comes in - we evaluate how our products would behave in home composting, hot composting, and industrial composting environments, while we evaluate how they behave if they end up in landfills or incinerators at our Environment department.

Our mission, as always, is striving toward finding circular solutions by pushing the industry one step closer to making large-scale composting of absorbent hygiene products a reality. As a first step to replacing conventional, non-biodegradable sanitary pads made with up to 90% plastic, we redesigned our product with biodegradable and compostable ingredients to make it as sustainable as possible. Our Biotech department is currently researching these areas:

1. Evaluating different microbes and enzymes suitable for effectively composting our ingredients
2. Evaluating methods for the safe composting of biodegradable products in different environments

Evaluating different microbes and enzymes suitable for effectively composting our ingredients

We design our products and ingredients by keeping both their functionality as well as their end-of-life scenarios in mind. Besides developing compostable ingredients, we also study which specific microbes can effectively break down our different ingredients, so that we can optimize the composting process after disposal.

Under optimal conditions, the composting process goes through three phases: the mesophilic (moderate temperature phase), the thermophilic (high-temperature phase) and maturation (cooling phase). During the different composting phases, different microorganisms become active and do their part to carry out the decomposition of various materials.

Evaluating methods for the safe composting of biodegradable products in different environments

The best thing about composting is that you can never go wrong with it as it’s a natural process - it also gives you a great canvas to experiment with; you can enhance the quality of the compost and reduce the time decomposing takes by optimizing some factors such as moisture content, temperature, microbes, carbon-to-nitrogen ratio, frequency of turning, etc. These factors play an important role when we try to compost items such as meat, bones, cooked food waste, or items containing bodily fluids such as used sanitary pads as they may contain pathogens (disease-causing organisms).