How To Compost – Page 86 – Crazy About Compost

Anaerobic Composting Update

Ahhhh, the weather broke... kind of. I went out on the balcony for the first time since the Fall and checked out the garbage bag, it was stuck to the deck a little bit. Back in November, I opened this bag the first time around and the material was definitely breaking down in there, but it wasn't finished. I wanted to give it another six months and take a peek, so when May comes around we'll see how it went through the winter months, and if the cold had a serious effect on the process. An aside: I was collecting the last of the leaves off my street yesterday to use for my next compost pile, and I decided to try a biodegradable garbage bag since I had some different…

Waxed Paper: Is It Compostable?

Sometimes I read really deep into really specific things. Although I don't use wax paper at all, somehow I ended up spending a week or two emailing companies that manufacture it to ask what theirs is made of. Soybean wax or paraffin? Is the paraffin derived from vegetable oil or petroleum? Every company I heard from used paraffin derived from petroleum, not vegetable oil. Of the 7 companies I received a reply from, 5 used paraffin from petroleum and the other 2 used soybean wax (The companies that haven't answered at all are Norpak and Marcal). Of the replies I received, If You Care had a thorough explanation as to why they use soybean wax instead of petroleum. More appealing than that was that their product is chlorine and bleach…

Worm Wonderings #1: can you compost waxed paper?

For fun, I decided to add some wax paper items to my worm composting bin: I decided to add a Jimmy John's sandwich wrapper and some little blueberry muffin cake things left over from Thanksgiving I forgot about. Seriously messed up on that one- my mom makes killer food. Sorry mom! I'll let you know if the worms like it (they did, but not the wax paper). Oh- did you know that the majority of "paper" cups you see contain a plastic liner in them? If your finished worm castings seem to have bits of shiny plastic in them, and you put a paper cup or two in the worm bin, chances are the remnants are what's left from the cups. Vermicomposting is fun, but I always go back to…