High Fibre Compost Works: Confessions of a Rotter
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA on 06.26.08
Compost isn’t Just for Kitchen Scraps
You know you’re a hippy when you move house and take your compost pile with you. Having spent three years in a house too shady to garden, yet composting all of our organic waste, we just couldn’t leave all that beautiful, dark, crumbly compost behind. So on the back of the truck it went, along with all the creatures who call it home. In the process we got to take a good look at the fruits of our labours, and that look validated our approach to composting. We had been experimenting with something called high-fibre composting, in which we not only added kitchen scraps to our heap, but also a good chunk of our household paper and cardboard waste. The idea has been long touted by the Centre for Alternative Technology, and is a great way to stop domestic heaps getting slimy or smelly (heaps with too much nitrogen-rich kitchen scraps, and too little carbon-rich woody materials, can suffer from lack of oxygen). It was amazing how quickly much of the cardboard, paper and other packaging materials had broken down, and I’m only sorry my camera is still in a packing crate somewhere, because (like any proud father), I would have loved to share a picture of my baby (I’ll have to content myself with a picture I took of someone else’s high-fibre system).
Correction to first sentence: you know you’re a hippy when you start calling your compost your baby…
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Sami - LOL!
Well said my man. I too am very attached to our worm composting bin that unfortunately underwent a war of sorts when centipedes invaded and ate some of the worms! But we got in there and eradicated them with forks and chopsticks!
I admire the dedication, but I can't help but thinking that taking your compost with you is a really, really bad idea when you move to a new house. I don't know about where you are, but where I used to live we had a bad infestation of Portugese millipedes. I went to great lengths to ensure that my compost bins were thoroughly cleaned to ensure I would not bring unwanted hangers-on with me.
Since compost is full of organisms, it seems a bad idea to shift them around - just because they're smaller doesn't mean they'll be less harmful to foreign environments.
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Author's comment:
Hmm - thanks for the thought Ben, and it's certainly a point worth considering. However, we were only moving 10 miles down the road, and into a pretty similar location, ecologically speaking (except a bit sunnier). So any harmful organisms (of which we haven't noticed any) would probably be well within migration distance by other means too. I'm no soil scientist, so maybe someone else can contradict me, but I suspect the very act of composting in the new place would carry the same risks as moving my compost from one place to another - I am technically creating an environment that wouldn't occur naturally in that space. But to my mind the benefits would out weigh the risks - I gotta eat after all, and if I'm not composting/cultivating, then I'm just paying someone else to do it somewhere else.
I didn't realize what i did had an official name! ... or maybe it doesn't ... I add the contents from my vacuum cleaner (no bag variety) which has lots of paper scraps (5 year old) and fur from the cat and dog. We also add any paper towels, tissues from around the main floor. Now, after reading this, I'll start adding the paper tubes from the bathroom roll more regularly and other cardboard items!
This past summers emptying yielded wonderful soil/compost for our veggies which are thriving with the nutrients and all our rain. I'm also finding myself looking forward to what our fall pile will look like.
Thanks!
I have hesitated to add paper and cardboard to my compost for fear of a few unknowns -- what is in the adhesives holding the cardboard together and what is in the inks in the paper? I use compost for my garden, so what would I unknowingly be adding to my kids' food?
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Author's comment:
It's a good question, and I don't have concrete answers for you. I know that the wiki page linked to above about this suggests that those concerns are less of a problem these days - soy ink is used very commonly by most printers. But no mention is made of the adhesives in the cardboard. I'll dig around (pun intended), and post any info I can find.
I do not currently compost, but I certainly intend to compost my garbage once I move out of a dorm and into an apartment next fall. This article's plan is not a bad idea, but I'd make one modification- I would only add non-recyclable paper to my compost. Paper plates, napkins, paper towels, and such "contaminated" paper are not-recyclable, so composting is clearly preferable to sending them to a landfill. But cardboard and most other paper can usually be recycled, which saves already living trees as opposed to fertilizing new plants and therefore should be even more green.
Hilarious! Feels really weird to admit it, but I share this affliction but have thus far been keeping it "in the closet"; wondered if I was some sort of freak. No, I think we just really appreciate the organic process.
HOWEVER, I do realize it's not for everyone, so I want to share with you how I learned to compromise: I only got into vermicomposting about 2 months ago, but the little buggers really know how to procreate, and it can really get away on you. So what I did was donated the main batch to our local community garden compost bin, and just keep a little bin at home now. Whenever I need potting soil, I just go help myself Makes me feel a little less weird.
Not sure if they will survive the winter though....