ASTM D6400 vs EN 13432 vs IS/ISO 17088 Compared

In short: four standards carry the main compostability claims in the US, EU, UK and India, and a fifth, ASTM D8410, governs unlined moulded fibre in the US. The test criteria are close to identical. The certificates are not transferable between them. A certificate is issued against a named scope. And the standard and the certificate can set different limits, which is where most PFAS confusion starts.

The comparison below covers published test thresholds, the limits of a certificate, and the instrument that names each standard in law. D6400 and EN 13432 have longer treatments of their own, linked at the end.

The four standards side by side

Regulated-element figures, biodegradation criteria and test methods below are as published by TUV Austria Belgium in its Comparison of standards for industrial compostability, Information Document 415, dated July 2024, which covers EN 13432, EN 14995, ISO 17088, ISO 18606 and ASTM D6400. ASTM D6868 is not in that document, so its entries are sourced from ASTM’s own scope statement and are marked where the value simply follows D6400.

	ASTM D6400-26	ASTM D6868-21	EN 13432:2000	IS/ISO 17088:2021
Region	North America	North America	Europe	International, adopted in India
Scope	Plastics and products made from plastics	End items where a plastic or polymer is combined with a substrate by lamination, extrusion or mixing, or used as a coating, binder or additive	Packaging and packaging materials	Plastics and products made from plastics
Biodegradation	90 percent of carbon to CO2 within 6 months at 58 ± 2C	Per ASTM, applied to the finished article	Same criterion	Same criterion
Test method	ISO 14855-1, ISO 14855-2, ASTM D5338	Per ASTM	ISO 14855	ISO 14855-1, ISO 14855-2
Disintegration	ISO 16929, ISO 20200	Per ASTM	No method specified in the standard itself	ISO 16929, ISO 20200
Lead limit	150 ppm US, 125 ppm Canada	Per ASTM	50 ppm	Lists regional values, 50 to 150 ppm
Cadmium limit	17 ppm US, 5 ppm Canada	Per ASTM	0.5 ppm	0.5 to 17 ppm
Fluorine limit	None in the standard	Not covered by ID 415	100 ppm	None in the standard

The regulated-element and test-method values in the D6400 column are those TUV Austria publishes for the 2023 edition; D6400-26 is the current edition and ASTM has not published a public diff.

Three things fall out of that table.

European limits are lower in almost every case. TUV Austria puts it plainly: compliance with EN 13432 for regulated components “therefore implies de facto compliance with ASTM D6400 in the US”. The same document names the two exceptions: cobalt is capped at 38 ppm and is “only mandatory in Canada and China”, and lead is 10 ppm in Japan against 50 ppm in the EU. Outside those two, European limits are systematically the lowest. The inference does not run in reverse: a product certified in the United States has not been assessed against European limits. Worth noting that TUV Austria requires cobalt to be measured for OK compost INDUSTRIAL certification regardless, because the European standards do not mandate it.

EN 13432 caps fluorine. The other standards do not. This is the least known difference and the most consequential one for anyone buying fibre packaging, because fluorine is the marker for PFAS. But read the next sentence carefully, because it is where most suppliers and most buyers go wrong: the limit can also sit in the certification scheme rather than the standard. See Compostability says nothing about PFAS below.

EN 13432 has not been revised since 2000. TUV Austria describes it as the origin of the others and notes it is finally under revision. The newer ISO and ASTM editions already require individual testing of constituents present between 1 and 10 percent, which EN 13432 does not, and which EN 13432 is expected to adopt.

ASTM D8410, the standard for unlined moulded fibre

This is the specification most often missed in US sourcing, and it is the one that applies to plain bagasse and other unlined fibre tableware.

ASTM D8410-22, Standard Specification for Evaluation of Cellulosic-Fiber-Based Packaging Materials and Products for Compostability in Municipal or Industrial Aerobic Composting Facilities, covers “cellulosic-fiber-based packaging materials and products”, and its scope names cellulosic pulp, corrugated materials, containerboard, paper, paperboard and moulded fibre explicitly. Clause 1.3 excludes end items where a thermoplastic polymer is laminated or extruded onto the cellulosic substrate.

The BPI Commercial Compostability Certification Scheme routes accordingly. Certification to ASTM D6400 in conjunction with ASTM D8410 is available for fibre-based products produced from cellulosic pulp, including moulded fibre, and D8410 certification is not available where a thermoplastic polymer has been laminated or extruded onto the substrate.

The practical consequence for a buyer: an unlined fibre item and a lined one take different routes. Unlined goes to D8410. Lined goes to D6868.

One piece of context matters when reading older documents. D8410 is recent: the first edition appeared in 2021 and the current edition is D8410-22. Fibre compostability reports issued before that were necessarily written against D6868, because D8410 did not exist, and many are still in circulation. A D6868 report on an unlined item is therefore usually a question of vintage rather than a mistake. The useful question to a supplier is which specification the report names and when it was issued.

What the tests actually measure

All of them assess the same four properties. The concept is common to every standard: 90 percent of the carbon in the material must be converted to carbon dioxide within a maximum of six months, in compost held at 58 ± 2C.

Biodegradation. Measured in test reactors against a cellulose reference and a compost-only blank, so that the compost’s own activity can be subtracted.

Disintegration. Whether the material physically breaks down, assessed under ISO 16929 or ISO 20200.

Ecotoxicity. Whether the resulting compost supports plant growth, tested against a control.

Regulated elements. Concentration limits on heavy metals, and in Europe on fluorine, expressed in ppm of dry material.

A standard is a test protocol, nothing more. A pass tells you how the material behaved in a laboratory running those conditions. It says nothing about what a given facility will do with the item.

Standard, test report, certificate

Three different documents, and they are routinely conflated.

The standard is the specification. The test report is what a laboratory issues after testing against it. The certificate is what a certification body issues on the strength of that report, against a defined scope.

A supplier saying a product “meets ASTM D6400” has not necessarily produced either of the other two. ASTM D6400 is not itself a certification.

This distinction is not academic. A certification scheme can impose requirements the standard does not, which is exactly what BPI does on fluorine, and it is why “certified to D6400” and “meets D6400” can describe two materially different products.

What this page does not cover

EN 14995:2006 is the European standard for plastics that are not packaging, and its own scope note directs packaging back to EN 13432. ISO 18606:2013, titled Packaging and the environment, Organic recycling, is the international packaging standard. Australia runs AS 4736-2006 for industrial and AS 5810-2010 for home composting, and France NF T51-800:2015 for home.

Worth noting for fibre buyers: certification schemes such as OK compost INDUSTRIAL and the Seedling mark are built on EN 13432, which is a packaging standard, but TUV Austria extends their scope to disposable tableware, including items made from sugarcane pulp.

What a certificate covers, and what it does not

Scope. It names products, material formulations and, in some schemes, a thickness range. It does not cover everything a producer makes. Where an item is available in several sizes or a lined and unlined version, each specification generally needs to fall within the stated scope.

Expiry. Validity periods are set by the certifying body. DIN CERTCO, for example, issues certifications for three years.

The logo is not the document. The Seedling mark and equivalent logos are widely reproduced. The document that can be checked is the certificate itself, with a reference number that can be verified against the certifying body’s public register.

Scheme rules sit on top of the standard. BPI’s scheme requires a fluorine ceiling that ASTM D6400 does not. Reading only the standard understates what a certified product has been assessed against.

Facility acceptance is separate. Composting operators set their own input specifications, and a certified item can still be rejected. BPI notes that composters have a limited ability to sort contamination efficiently and cost-effectively out of incoming material, which is why its labelling requirements are built around letting composters tell a certified item from a look-alike readily and easily. In our own dealings with buyers, the second common reason is retention time, which a site sets for its feedstock rather than for packaging; we have not found a published source stating that as a general rule, so treat it as an observation rather than an established finding.

Where each standard is referenced in law

United States. There is no federal compostability standard. The requirement sits in state law, and California is the most developed example, though not in the statute usually cited for it. The word “ASTM” does not appear in SB 54. The operative provisions are in the California Public Resources Code, Chapter 5.7, which dates from SB 567 (Stats. 2011, Ch. 594) and was amended by AB 1201 (Stats. 2021, Ch. 504); section 42357 was further amended by SB 1046 (Stats. 2022, Ch. 991). Section 42356(b)(1) defines the ASTM standard specification as D6400 or D6868 as published in 2019, and section 42357 prohibits selling a product labelled compostable or home compostable in California unless it meets that specification, or holds OK compost HOME certification where applicable. Where ASTM publishes a revision, section 42356.1(a) requires CalRecycle to review it but leaves adoption to its discretion, so the 2019 editions stand unless and until CalRecycle adopts a later one.

One provision matters directly to fibre buyers and is easy to miss. Section 42356.1(d) provides that fibre products demonstrated not to incorporate any plastics or polymers, “including, but not limited to, through lamination, extrusion, or mixing”, are not required to comply with an ASTM standard specification under that chapter.

EU and UK. EN 13432 is the standard the European industrial compostability certification schemes are built on, including OK compost INDUSTRIAL and the Seedling mark. Regulation (EU) 2025/40, the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, sets compostability obligations for certain packaging formats; Article 9(6) requires the Commission to ask the European standardisation organisations, by 12 February 2026, to prepare or update harmonised standards setting the detailed technical specifications. EN 13432 itself is named nowhere in the enacting articles: it appears once in the whole Regulation, in recital 55, which says its requirements “should be revised” on composting times, permissible contamination and microplastic release.

Separately, and often misread, UK Plastic Packaging Tax treatment of compostable packaging does not turn on compostability. HMRC guidance states that plastics include polymers which are “biodegradable, compostable, oxo-degradable”, so a compostable plastic is taxed as plastic. HMRC also states that “cellulose-based polymers that have not been chemically modified, such as viscose, are not treated as plastic for the purpose of Plastic Packaging Tax”, while chemically modified cellulose such as cellulose acetate is.

India. The Plastic Waste Management Rules name IS/ISO 17088:2021 twice. Rule 4(1)(h), as substituted on 14 March 2024, requires carry bags and commodities made from compostable plastics to conform to it. Rule 11(3), inserted by the same notification, requires each plastic packaging or commodity made from compostable plastics to bear the label “compostable only under industrial composting” and to conform to the same standard. India does not recognise a home compostable category at all: the word “home” does not appear in G.S.R. 201(E), in the 2016 base rules as amended, or in the 2021 and 2022 amendments.

A drafting point worth knowing if you are matching documents: the gazette reproduces the standard’s title as “Specifications for Compostable Plastics”, which is the title of the withdrawn 2012 edition. The current BIS title for IS/ISO 17088:2021 is Compostable Plastics, Specification (Second Revision).

India also requires a certificate from the Central Pollution Control Board before marketing or selling, under rule 4(1)(ha). The certificate is issued to the company and scoped to a named plant address: CPCB’s own template reads “M/s. ( Name & Address of the Unit)”, and its SOP further requires a QR code carrying the name, plant address and certificate number for goods “manufactured at the certified unit”, and its published list of certified manufacturers carries a separate office address and plant address for each entry, with multi-plant producers enumerated plant by plant. Check the plant on the certificate against the plant on the invoice.

Industrial and home compostability are different claims

All of them describe controlled or industrial composting, typically around 58C. Home compostability is assessed under separate schemes at ambient temperature, where the heap runs cooler and less consistently than the 55 to 60C of an industrial process.

TUV Austria’s OK compost HOME is the oldest of these, defined in 2003, and TUV notes that it “is not based on a standard but is the basis for several standards”: the Australian AS 5810-2010, the French NF T51-800:2015 and EN 17427:2022 all followed it.

An industrial certificate does not support a home compostable claim. India goes further: Rule 11(3) requires the pack itself to read “compostable only under industrial composting”.

Compostability says nothing about PFAS

The standard and the certificate answer this differently, and that is the whole point.

EN 13432 caps fluorine at 100 ppm of dry material. ASTM D6400 and IS/ISO 17088 set no fluorine limit in the standard itself, per TUV Austria’s comparison. D6868 and D8410 are not covered by that comparison; D8410 states it is technically equivalent to ISO 18606, for which TUV also records no fluorine limit.

But a certification scheme can require more than the standard it certifies against, and the main North American scheme does. BPI has required, since 1 January 2020, that organic fluorinated substances are not present in formulations for BPI-certified items, with a ceiling of 100 ppm total fluorine in the finished product, a supplier statement that none were intentionally added, and SDS review. Certification is valid for three years and recertification testing runs on that three-year cycle; separately, the test reports submitted must be no older than 12 months. BPI’s scheme allows an exception where the producer can isolate the ingredients and demonstrate the fluorine came from an inorganic source such as talc rather than an organic fluorinated substance.

So the correct question is not “which standard” but which certificate, issued under which scheme, in which year. A product certified to ASTM D6400 through BPI after January 2020 has had a fluorine limit applied. A product tested to ASTM D6400 without a scheme certificate has not.

PFAS is still assessed separately. A supplier declaration states that none were intentionally added, which is a statement about intent, not a measurement. Screening is done by total fluorine or total organic fluorine, depending on the method specified. BPI’s scheme specifies total fluorine, prepared by digestion rather than extraction, under EN 14582, ISO 10304, DIN 51723, EN 15408 or ASTM D1179-04. Either way the measurement quantifies how much fluorine is present without identifying the compound. A low result is evidence that fluorochemicals were not added. A positive result shows fluorine is there without telling you which substance.

Two documents. Two different questions:

Question	Document
Will it break down in an industrial composting facility?	Compostability certificate, with the scope read
Does it contain fluorochemicals?	Total fluorine or total organic fluorine test report on the item being bought

Reading a certificate: five checks

1. Which standard, and which edition or year. This matters more than it looks: California is pinned to the 2019 editions of D6400 and D6868, while ASTM’s current D6400 edition is D6400-26.
2. Which scope. Read the products, formulations and any thickness range named on the certificate, and compare them with the item being purchased. For fibre, check whether the specification matches a lined or an unlined item.
3. Which certifying body, and whether the reference number appears in that body’s public register. Check the scheme rules too, not only the standard.
4. Which dates. Issue and expiry.
5. Which plant. In markets such as India the certificate is issued to the company but scoped to a named plant address, so confirm the plant on the certificate is the plant on the invoice.

Where to go next

This page settles which standard is which. What you read next depends on what you are actually trying to decide.

If you need one standard in depth. Start with the ASTM D6400 compostability standard and BPI certification for North America, or the EN 13432 standard and the Seedling mark for Europe. Both go further than the comparison above on test detail and on what a certificate under each one actually says.

If your real question is PFAS, not compostability. Read how to verify a PFAS-free bagasse supplier. The short version is on this page: the fluorine limit usually sits in the certification scheme rather than in the standard, so the certificate matters more than the standard number.

If you are checking one market’s rules. The compliance checker gives bans, taxes and required certifications by market. For the detail behind it, see the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, UK Plastic Packaging Tax treatment of compostables or India’s Plastic Waste Management Rules and EPR categories.

If you have a supplier’s documents in front of you. Choosing a compostable tableware supplier covers what to ask for and in what order. The five checks in reading a certificate above are the fastest way to spot a scope mismatch before you get to price.

Sources

• TUV Austria Belgium, Comparison of standards for industrial compostability, Information Document 415, July 2024 , the source for the regulated-element figures, biodegradation criteria and test methods for EN 13432, EN 14995, ISO 17088, ISO 18606 and ASTM D6400.
• Plastic Waste Management (Amendment) Rules, 2024, G.S.R. 201(E), 14 March 2024 , rules 4(1)(h), 4(1)(ha) and 11(3) as cited here.
• CPCB, Standard Operating Procedure for issuing certificates to compostable plastic manufacturers, Annexure I certificate template.
• HMRC, Work out which packaging is subject to Plastic Packaging Tax
• California Public Resources Code sections 42356, 42356.1 and 42357, added by AB 1201 (Stats. 2021, Ch. 504).
• ASTM D6400-26, ASTM D6868-21, ASTM D8410-22 and ISO 17088 , the standards themselves are paywalled, which is why this page exists.
• BPI Commercial Compostability Certification Scheme v2.7, September 2026 and BPI on fluorinated chemicals , the fluorine requirement, its effective date and the certification cycle.
• TUV Austria, OK compost HOME and OK compost INDUSTRIAL , the home-composting scheme history and the industrial temperature range.
• Regulation (EU) 2025/40, enacting text via the EU Publications Office CELLAR service.
• Public certification registers: BPI, TUV Austria OK compost, DIN CERTCO and CPCB Compostable Plastics E Certification.

Last reviewed 30 September 2026. Corrections are welcome and this page is updated when the underlying instruments change.