Can I use paper from a domestic shredder to make Compost ?
Absolutely. I have just chucked a load in my compost bin yesterday. Sometimes i put a load of shredded paper in the potato bed prior to the manure.
i use it in the bean trenchers to retain moisture
Yes, it's an excellent addition to making compost, plus no one will ever be able to sellotape together all your data!
My 6 year old asked if we could do some shredding today so after school we will be filling a few carrier's, I put some in the bean trench and always keep some handy if the dalek bins get too wet, stir in a few handfuls and it normally retuns to a nice mix. ;D
Quote from: bella4legs on February 28, 2011, 21:37:59
Can I use paper from a domestic shredder to make Compost ?
Welcome to A4A Bella... I do... if you have lots of colour/ glossy bits you could have a problem with the inks... but routine things like statements... fine.
Once lawn mowing starts, and it won't be long now, mix clippings with shredded paper 50/50 and add to compost heap. Rots down fast and heats up lovely
Great tips. Am taking note!
i also use it in my wormbin and it disappears - the worms must like it.]
I use it as mulch on the fruit bushes! I usually spread a little manure under it, about now in fact or during winter, then I spread a thick layer of it. It looks a bit odd at first, gleaming white! But it breaks down a bit more slowly than straw etc and provides good mulch, stops grass growing too wild. I just put down more and there is not a single trace of last year's batch...
Modern inks are biodegradeable... by EU order I thought.....
Quote from: saddad on March 01, 2011, 07:49:11
Quote from: bella4legs on February 28, 2011, 21:37:59
Can I use paper from a domestic shredder to make Compost ?
Welcome to A4A Bella... I do... if you have lots of colour/ glossy bits you could have a problem with the inks... but routine things like statements... fine.
The inks aren't the problem (unless your periodicals come from outside EU) and most of the organic sites accept this unless they have gone gaga (or gagagaia).
The problem is the amount of clay they put into shiny paper - if it isn't well diluted with compost it turns into a horrible claggy mess.
If you are using newspaper then the more the merrier - you can even compost 100% if you can get the air in and top up the nitrogen - either with growmore or with the warm amber nectar you get after the cold amber nectar has been through the drinker (with apologies to the Worzels).
Cheers.
Quote from: chriscross1966 on March 01, 2011, 15:51:31
Modern inks are biodegradeable... by EU order I thought.....
Oh good... I'm pleased to hear it.. :)
we shove some in the squash/cucumber/melon pits as well as the bean trenches, keeps the moisture in, not that we need it at the mo ;D
Thanks very much everybody for your help, it's greatly appreciated and I will certainly compost shredder paper from now on.
Some of my suppliers shred their computer paper and use it for packing instead of plastic bubble wrap. I had too much last year and used the excess instead of straw under my strawberrys - worked fine as a whole bale of straw is too much.
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The problem is the amount of clay they put into shiny paper - if it isn't well diluted with compost it turns into a horrible claggy mess.
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I wondered why that happened!
Thanks Vinlander
Quote from: pumpkinlover on March 12, 2011, 21:07:39
The problem is the amount of clay they put into shiny paper - if it isn't well diluted with compost it turns into a horrible claggy mess.
I wondered why that happened!
Thanks Vinlander
The silver lining to this is: that wet glossy magazines dry to what is very like an artificial slate - if your raised beds are 'battered' at 45 degrees you can use the 'slates' to line them and stop the rain washing them onto your paths.
It makes a very good stopgap while you collect planks from skips!
Cheers.
the toxins in paper waste might well be acceptable to the EU but you have to decide if they are acceptable to you - you need to make an informed decision beyond what the powers that be tell us, in my not so humble opinion ;D - if you care about what goes into your vegetables and fruit and then ultimately in you then you need to do your research
Having downsized my hen house, I use shredded paper as bedding. It will be going into the compost bin every week or two so i get the best of both - compost... chicken manure.
Quote from: calendula on March 14, 2011, 17:33:22
the toxins in paper waste might well be acceptable to the EU but you have to decide if they are acceptable to you - you need to make an informed decision beyond what the powers that be tell us, in my not so humble opinion ;D - if you care about what goes into your vegetables and fruit and then ultimately in you then you need to do your research
Yes that's true, but there are qualified (even slightly paranoid) experts in the organic movement who are prepared to accept them.
Inks from pre-80s newspapers were considered safe by the organic movement of the time - when it was still massively more scientific than the dogma taught by the 'modern' agriculture at the time.
Inks have got better and even colour ones no longer use toxic metals like lead and cadmium - they are synthetic dyes like other modern dyes.
The recent scare about mineral oils (from inks) in recycled card concerned direct contact to food products (almost certainly ready to eat/cook) and contact through permeable plastic film/bags.
Your primary line of defence against all the nasty things in soil (rotting manure! rotting bugs! terpenes! purines! anthrax! legionella!) is the power of living bugs to break it down, and the power of vegetables to extract the useful stuff and keep the toxins out.
The main toxin that soil bugs can't protect you from is lead from paint flakes or C20th car exhausts - and even then humus (in large quantities) is capable of locking it away.
Dyes work by interacting with light - almost by definition this means they are highly reactive and quickly decompose in any soil.
All oils are full of energy and are therefore food for any bug that can cope with them - just because they are toxic to us (like crude oil) doesn't mean something in the ecosystem isn't just itching to munch them up (like in the Gulf of Mexico).
If we aren't prepared to give reasonable credence to experts that are already 'on our side' then we are in danger of moving to a position where filling a dead cow horn with manure is magically more 'healthful' than mixing manure with hoof & horn meal.
Then the 'alternative health' quacks rub their hands together and 'see you coming' - before we know it we'll be buying manure that's been blessed by an alternative priest...
Cheers.
Welcome to A4A Slugcrusher... you are in good company there.. ;D
My 3 year old and I have great fun tearing up our cardboard and newspapers to add to the compost. I found it worked really well when mixed with grass clippings and last summer for the first time ever my compost actually got hot! The worms seem to love the paper too.
I also soak card and paper and put in the bottom of pots, potato and bean trenches to retain moisture.
@ Vinlander - I can get very interested in almost anything in the soil that has a purpose and a natural need to be there for whatever reason, fit for purpose so to speak, what I don't care for is the unnatural and that includes my runner beans soaking up toxic inks and folks on boxes spouting on about the safety of toxins and you have to remember that even the collective organic experts are hugely varied in their dogma - I like bugs, not too keen on radioactivity though ;D
Quote from: calendula on March 15, 2011, 09:33:22
@ Vinlander - I can get very interested in almost anything in the soil that has a purpose and a natural need to be there for whatever reason, fit for purpose so to speak, what I don't care for is the unnatural and that includes my runner beans soaking up toxic inks and folks on boxes spouting on about the safety of toxins and you have to remember that even the collective organic experts are hugely varied in their dogma - I like bugs, not too keen on radioactivity though ;D
I can understand that, and it's certainly safe to avoid anything that isn't naturally in the soil - but you could be even safer - where do you draw the line between reason and obsession?
Plastic ties aren't OK? pots made from anything except wood and string? anything that has metallic iron? nails, poles? - until they rust, when they magically become fine - presumably?
I think my view is balanced - whether or not you agree...
There is a range of views in the middle ground, but at the extremes there are certainly as many paid propagandists to the commercial side of me as there are eco/alternative/spirit/homeopathic type flannel/wafflers on the other.
I personally try very hard to avoid any new molecules that by definition haven't been around long enough to be understood - depending on how complex they are, that means between 100 and 1000 years.
I'd like to avoid all the pseudo-oestrogens we are bombarded with in PET bottles and the like (they worry me 100x more than copper or derris) - but it is very difficult to do that and still live in this century (or the last).
If the molecules are designed to kill something - anything - then they are 100x as frightening and if they are designed to be persistent in the environment (most) they are 100x as frightening again.
If they end up actually on my food (as opposed to around the roots) then 100x more frightening again.
This makes all modern pest/fungi/herbicides between 1 million and 100 million times as frightening as reactive inks and mineral oils (to my poor brain at least).
The question is how much paranoia gives benefits (like in Catch 22) and where diminishing returns cut in.
I certainly can't answer that question - but the more we know about who is on our side (like most bugs and some pundits) and who really isn't (like absolutely anyone who sells you stuff - or thinks they might) - the less time spent watching our feet miss the cracks in the pavement and the more time spent enjoying the big picture.
Cheers.
PS. Radiation is a relatively non-complex threat to health. Before you start worrying too much about low level radiation you should check out 'hormesis'. And even at high levels it needs to be pointed out that Chernobyl is expected to kill 4000 people before their time (a lot less have died to date) whereas the recent tsunami definitely has killed a lot more already - maybe 20x more when the tally is finished. The Fukushima plant - horrible as it is and getting worse - is still very very unlikely to match Chernobyl, and very very unlikely to be more than a blip on the overall catastrophe - unless you are a journalist who gets more kicks from 'bigging' a small story than reporting a huge one straight.
I think your worry about paranoia is, well, paranoia itself - you should work for the government - ooh perhaps you do ;D
Quote from: calendula on March 16, 2011, 09:23:26
I think your worry about paranoia is, well, paranoia itself - you should work for the government - ooh perhaps you do ;D
That's a laugh! If you read this thread along with my other posts you will find I generally advocate extreme scepticism to the edge of paranoia (is there such a thing as euparanoia? - there should be - as in Catch-22) - but only about government's most sacred cow - absolutely anything that makes money.
I've recently cast nasturtiums (or at least doubts) at government regulatory departments over pesticides etc.
I advocate tolerance and inclusiveness towards those (who despite their odd views and superstitions) are doing the right thing - even if their reasons are flaky and I can't resist taking the p!$$.
I do get exasperated if people don't listen to the sensible end of the organic movement (that's the one that thinks biodynamics is well-meaning bunk). That means they are missing the big picture - like the chain-smoking character in Frazier who chides a pastry cook saying "there's white sugar in them - I won't touch it - that's stuff's pure poison".
I suspect you are basing your own paranoia on one footnote - just because I'm not screaming the house down about radiation risk (in this time of much worse problems & much worse risks) - does that make me a government agent? Me and James Lovelock?
LOL and happy dreams.
Cheers.
I'm not a Government agent, I'm a free agent (well out of work....) ::)