Tuesday, May 19, 2009

10 uses Tuesday: Compost Style!

The composting continues here on Green Gracious, for 10 uses Tuesday. Now, if you are a regular reader of 10 uses Tuesday you may quickly realize that today's is going to be a little different. Instead of 10 (or 11) uses for one thing, today I am going to fill you in on at least 10 different things you can put in your compost pile that you may not have realized. I know the first time I heard about some of the things that can be composted, I was shocked, and it has diminished the amount of trash I have every week since.

So let's get started. Everyday things you may never have known you can compost:

1. The stuff in your vacuum.  Permitted you haven't just vacuumed up plastic or glass or some such thing, most of the stuff in your vacuum bag or canister is good to go.
2. Paper towels.
3. Kleenex
4. Wool socks.
5.  Dryer lint
6. Nail clippings.  Eeew right?  But still cool.
7. Coffee grounds.
8. Weeds
9. Newspaper
10. Rodent (guinea pig, mouse, rat, etc) old bedding 

and my 11. Receipts.  I have taken to putting these in the compost because I can and it saves them from recycling, which means ultimately it saves energy.  

So there are 11.  And of course there are the usual suspects, old fruit (peels, stems, pits, seeds, etc...) old yogurt, soy milk, stale bread, old pasta, weeds, etc..

Go forth and build your compost and if you have a favorite compost fodder that we've missed, please fill us in!

3 comments:

MLDB said...

I'm so glad that you are doing these posts this week. I just told Chris that I wanted to start composting, but I didn't know how to start. We've figured out the "little bucket on the counter", and are working on where and how to keep the compost in our yard. We live pretty close to neighbors, so we are in the market for a good size composter!

Over Coffee - the green edition said...

I love the laundry lint thing. Who knew!
You want to be careful composting weeds because the seeds may stay “active’ and when you spread the compost you could also be spreading weed seeds.

jkluginbill said...

I love to compost. Isn't it fun to find new things to put in the bin? Well...fun for some of us evidently. :)

Also, egg cartons. I tend to break mine up to be smaller and the new cups at the coffee shop (if I happen to forget mine at home) totally go in! Loving it!

Fun week! I <3 compost week!