If you've ever cut open a shipping box and found a small paper sachet marked "home compostable," there's a good chance it's referencing AS 5810 — Australia's standard for home compostable plastics. For a product like KompoDry's mineral desiccant packet, which is designed to be thrown straight into a garden bed or compost heap after use, this standard isn't a marketing tick-box. It's the technical bar the whole product concept has to clear.
The Standard, In Plain English
AS 5810:2010 sets out the requirements and test procedures used to determine whether a material genuinely biodegrades under home composting conditions (as opposed to an industrial facility running at higher, more consistent temperatures). It's the basis on which a product can legitimately be labelled "home compostable" in Australia, and it covers four things: biodegradability, disintegration, effects on the composting process itself, and the safety of the resulting compost.
The practical thresholds are demanding:
Disintegration: at least 90% of the material must break down into pieces smaller than 2mm within roughly 6–9 months in a home compost environment.
Biodegradation: at least 90% of the material must fully convert to CO₂, water, and biomass within 12 months, at the relatively mild temperatures (around 20–30°C) a backyard compost bin actually reaches.
No toxicity: the finished compost has to show no harmful effect on plants or earthworms.
Composition: the product generally needs to be made predominantly from organic material, and increasingly, applicants must confirm no PFAS or similar persistent chemicals have been added.
Industry commentary consistently describes AS 5810 as one of the more demanding compostability standards globally, precisely because home compost bins are far less controlled than commercial facilities; no guaranteed heat, no guaranteed turning schedule, no guaranteed moisture. A material that passes AS 5810 will typically also satisfy the industrial standard, AS 4736, but the reverse isn't true.
Why This Matters More for a Desiccant Than for Most Packaging
Most compostable packaging just has to disappear. A desiccant packet has a harder job: it has to disappear and leave behind something that doesn't damage the soil it's dropped into — because unlike a compostable coffee cup, this is a product explicitly marketed as something to place in a garden bed.
That's really the design brief AS 5810 imposes on KompoDry's formulation:
The kraft paper shell is made up of wood pulp, so soil microbes can consume it in a matter of weeks — well inside the standard's disintegration window — while contributing organic carbon rather than plastic fragments.
The bentonite clay and natural zeolite aren't waste to be broken down at all; they're already inert, naturally occurring minerals. They don't need to biodegrade in the chemical sense because they were never organic material to begin with — they simply integrate into the soil structure, which is consistent with AS 5810's toxicity requirements as long as no harmful additives are introduced.
The magnesium sulfate dissolves as ordinary Epsom salt, a common garden amendment, which supports rather than threatens the "no toxic effect on plants" criterion.
The calcium chloride acts as a fast-acting, short-term calcium supplement to quickly correct acute deficiencies (like blossom end rot in tomatoes) and strengthen plant cell walls.
This is the core reason the pitch for KompoDry frames the packet as "post-use value" rather than just "biodegradable waste." AS 5810 isn't only asking "does it vanish?" It's asking "does what's left behind actually belong in soil." A silica gel and Tyvek packet fails at the first hurdle. KompoDry's mineral matrix is designed to pass both.
Certification Is a Process, Not a Claim
It's worth being upfront about how AS 5810 compliance actually works, because "compostable" is a heavily scrutinised claim in Australia. Passing AS 5810 isn't a self-declared status — it requires laboratory testing (biodegradation, disintegration, ecotoxicity, and chemical analysis of the material) conducted by an accredited third party, generally through a body like the Australasian Bioplastics Association, before a product can carry a verified home compostable logo. Certification bodies have also tightened requirements in recent years, including explicit confirmation that no PFAS-type chemicals have been added to the formulation.
For a product still in prototype and formulation testing, as KompoDry currently is, that means the gravimetric absorption data (the 40–65% moisture uptake figures) and the AS 5810 alignment of the raw materials are the engineering case for compostability. The formal AS 5810 certification is the separate, subsequent step of proving it in an accredited lab
Where This Leaves the Product
The honest positioning is a strong one: KompoDry's material choices; kraft paper, bentonite, zeolite, magnesium sulfate are selected specifically because each one is compatible with the disintegration, biodegradation, and non-toxicity criteria AS 5810 tests for, in a way that Tyvek and silica gel simply cannot be. The next milestone isn't reformulating the product; it's taking the current formulation through accredited testing to convert "engineered to the standard" into a verified AS 5810 certification and licensed home compostable logo, the marker that will actually let brands put it on their packaging with confidence.