There are two types of composting. Most people are familiar with industrial composting that happens in a large facility. Home composting is another type that happens outside of big facilities.
The main benefit to tattooers using ‘home’ compostables is that they breakdown safely and don't require industrial processing.
Thin regular plastics like bags, plastic wrap and blister packaging breaks down into micro plastics we can’t clean up. Certified ‘home’ compostable means the material has proven to break down in ambient conditions on a set timeline. Tattooers will still dispose of them with regular trash but they are not contributing to micro plastic pollution when they decompose. And divesting from petroleum plastic is a divestment from fossil fuels.
Longterm we are striving towards a waste management system for tattoo garbage like a sharps program where we can connect composting facilities to tattooers through a pick up service. But we won’t get to that awesome future without supporting the development of compostable materials now.
Cool fact about commercial composting
In the US there are already a number of facilities composting biohazards like septage (that’s human poop, blood etc) Instead of sending our garbage to landfills or creating more air pollution through incineration we could have a closed loop system with technology that already exists in other industries.
Look for this mark of conformity on products claiming to be home compostable.