You may remember back in March/early April I decided to take my condom experiment from the compost tumbler to the worm bin. Why? …why not?
Worms are so quick to gobble through whatever waste is thrown at them…maybe they’ll eat latex? Let’s take a look:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANC1HBsDw7I
The worms don’t seem too interested, do they? And no, the experiment isn’t over yet. I’m leaving the condoms in there. It took my compost tumbler a good 9+ months to really get the condoms broken down in the slightest…I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s still plenty of pieces in there. A small-scale backyard composting project isn’t going to produce crazy hot composting temperatures for a sustained period of time (which is definitely why my Sun Chips bag is still intact a good 10 months after putting it in).
I’m going to make a phone call to the local commercial composting facility and see how they react to the idea of composting latex…this should be fun.
thanks for posting the results of your experiment. how did the call go? also what happens if you put non compostable things in the compost?!
No latex allowed… bummer!
Non-compostable stuff gets sifted out in the process. Composting facilities don’t have the separation technologies that MRFs do, but they’re getting there.
Good experiment–just wondering if anything happened since July. I found a lot of references online saying latex condoms *can* be composted. I’m definitely going to try in my worm bin (wish I had thought to over the winter when I ignore the worms except to dump stuff in), but I’m willing to put all kinds of things in that might turn out to not biodegrade quickly. I’m the one who has to deal with it when I get around to handsorting out the worms from the finished compost so I don’t mind! Thanks for putting your results up!
I would lean towards “no”. I wish they could work, but after talking with some commercial facilities that refuse it, and obviously not being able to compost it at home with much more modest temperatures, I would keep it out of the compost pile.