“We want to make sure that the products that are going to composting facilities are safe for those composting facilities and not negatively impacting their compost quality,” Yepsen says.

For context, the bowls tested by The Counter showed fluorine levels 10 to 20 times higher than the 100 ppm cutoff that BPI established. The new requirement will ensure that future molded fiber products, if they’re going to be certified by BPI, will be more like the piece of printer paper we tested: not zero total fluorine, but only enough to suggest the presence is accidental.

Untill a viable PFAS-free alternative is developed, then, San Francisco’s new rule amounts to an effective ban on molded fiber products. And while the law will take effect in a few short months, the city’s restaurants really not ready for it. Jackson’s Zero Waste Team is currently providing outreach materials to restaurants, and letting them know to expect the change. City-owned properties have already switched from molded fiber bowls and clamshells to wax-paper-lined shallow cups (“like a cup, but short,” Jackson says), as well cardboard takeout boxes lined with plant-based plastic.

Solutions do already exist, Jackson says. “There are safer alternatives out there. We can buy them. They’re on the market. They’re scalable. Distributors can accept them. So there’s no reason not to change what is allowed in San Francisco.”

But what about the businesses who have built their brands around bowls—and the message they’d hoped those receptacles would convey? For now, there is no commercially viable plan B. The food-service packaging giant Sabert, for instance, has convened an internal PFAS task force dedicated to solving the issue, but hasn’t yet announced a new alternative. Sabert declined to respond to my list of written questions, after first indicating it would. That silence may be revealing, illustrating how unprepared the food-service industry is to take this topic on. If companies like Sabert and Sweetgreen don’t even know how to talk about their fluorinated products publicly, they’re a long way from being able to provide a suitable replacement.

Doing the right thing

After the Toxic-Free Future report revealed PFAS in Whole Foods’ deli papers and hot bar boxes, Rhodes Yepsen says he sat down with company representatives to discuss BPI certification and the future of the supermarket’s products. He was asked a number of questions about BPI’s process and testing methods. But at the end of the conversation, Yepsen had a question of his own.

Why does Whole Foods, he remembers asking, care about compostable products in the first place? When commercial composting facilities are not available, as is the case in many regions throughout the country, the company doesn’t collect takeout boxes for composting. It asks people to throw them in the garbage can, where they’re taken to the landfill. But if those boxes often aren’t composted, even if they’re technically compostable, why the emphasis on BPI certification?

“They didn’t really have an answer,” Yepsen tells me.

He says he often has conversations like this one with retailers and food-service companies who want to be assured their products are compostable, even though they’re not actually composting. He’s often given vague assurances. “We just want to do the right thing,” is a sentiment he says he hears a lot.