In one teaspoon of healthy soil, you’ll find more organisms than there are people on earth. Keeping the ground below us healthy can trickle down into so many aspects of our lives, whether it’s from the food we eat and the animals thriving in our backyard to the availability of water.

So naturally, when millions of tons of plastic waste get thrown into landfills due to discarded packaging alone, that’s going to affect the earth. Not only will it take hundreds, or possibly up to 1,000 years to decompose, but those plastics could leach harmful chemicals into our soil. It’s also a bit of a missed opportunity—food waste accounts for 8% of emissions, and if we could compost that instead, we could reduce the methane production from food sitting in a landfill and enrich the soil.

Luckily, designers can be part of the solution. One big way they can do that is by using compostable packaging for the right kinds of products—that’s right, compostable packaging isn’t the correct choice for every item. Until now, deciding on whether or not to use compostable packs has been easier said than done, but A Plastic Planet hopes to demystify this challenge, and they’re moderating a panel this Tuesday, October 19th (11 am GMT / 6 am EST).