Having a composting system at home is a great way to use common household items by adding them to your compost instead of the trash. There are many common things such as egg shells, toilet rolls, paper towels and vegetable peelings that are beneficial to your compost.
What is compost?
Composting is the process where organic materials such as food scraps, grass clippings, and cardboard break down over time and turn into nutrient rich soil. This natural process provides a sustainable way to create fertile soil for gardening and farming and better use waste items that would otherwise end up in the landfill.
Why have a compost system at home?
Better Soil
Composting helps to enrich the soil with essential nutrients, improve soil structure, and retain moisture. This leads to healthier plants, increased biodiversity, and less of a need for adding fertiliser to your garden.
Save Money
By reducing waste going to landfill you will reduce your rubbish disposal and dump costs. Overall you won’t save huge amounts of money but you may save on landfill costs, especially for bulky things like lawn clippings and small tree branches.
If you are a gardener then you get the benefit of creating your own soil to add to your garden beds or vegetable patch. So the less compost and soil that you buy at your garden centre then the more money you will save.
Reducing waste going to landfills
Clearly returning organic materials to the earth is more environmentally friendly than burying them in a landfill, where they decompose anaerobically and produce methane. In America food waste accounts for 24% of all waste that ends up in landfills. Although meat and dairy can’t be composted a large portion of food waste can be diverted from landfills. When you add waste to your compost you are effectively re-purposing the waste rather than adding it to landfill waste.
A good compost system can eliminate (or at least reduce) the need to purchase soil or compost for your garden. Commonly soil and compost products are packaged in plastic bags then shipped to your local gardening store. The less that you buy then the more you save in terms of your dollars and of plastic waste.
Less greenhouse gas emissions
Another added environmental benefit is that greenhouse gas emissions are much less when composted, as the organic matter is broken down aerobically. The composting process produces less methane compared to when it decomposes in a landfill.
Common kitchen items to add to your compost
- Avocado stone (will take a long time but does break down)
- Vegetable peelings
- Vegetable stems and trimmed off leaves
- Fruit core, peelings, pips
- Banana peels (great source of potassium)
- Citrus peels (not too many as are acidic)
- Leftover food (non-dairy or meat)
- Coffee grounds and used coffee filters
- Teabags (check material first as some are made of plastic mesh)
- Bamboo cutlery
- Wooden chopsticks
- Nut shells
- Paper towels
- Egg shells
- Corn husks
- Corn cobs (take a long time but does break down)
- Cardboard roll from paper towel roll
- Cardboard egg cartons
- Old bamboo sushi rolling mat
- Onion peels (in moderation)
- Natural wine corks
- Yeast (if you find some old yeast in the pantry past its best)
Kitchen waste and food scraps can be added to your compost. Most of us all have vegetable and fruit peelings that we need to get rid of. These are great for your compost as they add nutrients to your compost as they break down. As a general rule avoid putting dairy, meat or fatty/oily food waste in your compost as you don’t want to attract animals to your compost as these rot.
Common household items to compost
- Dryer lint (may contain traces of microplastic from synthetic fibres)
- Toilet rolls
- Hair from hairbrush or vacuum head
- Pet hair
- Nail clippings
- Woodfire ash (from untreated wood)
- Paper or cardboard (low or no ink, non-glossy, ideally unbleached or brown)
- Cotton make-up pads
- Cotton clothing/rags (ideally organic cotton)
- Home-compostable courier/shipping bags
- Shredded cardboard/paper packaging
- Bamboo toothbrush (bristles removed)
- Bamboo soap rack (once at end of life)
- Loofah sponge
- Biodegradable wipes
- Wool or woolen clothing
- Dryer balls (when at the end of their life)
- Cardboard takeaway coffee cup holders
- Brown paper shopping bags
- Old flower bouquet
- Cotton string
Items to compost outside the home
- Grass clippings
- Weeds (early stage not at seed head stage of life)
- Twigs and small branches
- Fallen or dry leaves
- Manure (plant based diet animals)
- Fire pit ash (non treated wood or non-rubbish)
- Dead or old flowers
- Pine needles
- Tree bark
- Sawdust and wood chip
- Feathers
- Seaweed
- Hedge clippings
How to prepare items for composting?
To prepare these household items for composting, it is best to rip, tear or chop them into smaller pieces. This will help accelerate the decomposition process and ensure that the materials break down evenly. For toilet rolls and egg cartons I generally tear these into pieces however I toilet rolls can be composted whole.
I had saved up about 10 egg cartons intending to use them for vegetable seedlings, however I hadn’t got these done in time for spring planting. These went to good use in our compost and provided a fun activity for my children to help rip them up together before throwing them onto our compost pile.
When adding fruit to compost it is best to cover with other materials, such as grass clipping or some of the compost pile, to avoid fruit flies as these the fruit breaks down.
In reality you don’t really need much care or preparation for what you are putting into your compost pile. Ideally you want to have a blend of things and avoid overloading it with lots of citrus or wet items.
What NOT to add to your compost?
It is important to note that while adding most food waste items into your compost is beneficial, it is very important to avoid adding meat, dairy, and oily foods. These items can attract pests (rats and cats), create unpleasant odors, and slow down the composting process.
These things should not be composted
- Meat and seafood
- Large bones (I avoid bones altogether)
- Ash from general rubbish burned
- Oily foods and oily paper towels
- Dairy products such as milk, cheese, butter
- Synthetic clothing/rags
- Leather (often treated with chemicals)
- Glossy paper (white paper can also be chemically bleached)
- Stickers or labels (watch for fruit stickers)
- Heavily inked cardboard/paper
- Plastic
- Commercially compostable packaging (not going to get compost hot enough to break it down at home)
- Dog, Cat or animal manure/poop
- Nylon tea bags
- Coal (doesn’t break down)
- Vacuum dust (can contain micro-plastics)
- Wrapping paper and cellophane
How to make compost successfully
A successful composting process relies on having a mix of nitrogen (greens) and carbon (browns). The composting process works best when the ratio of composting material is 1 part green to 2-3 parts brown.
Greens – Nitrogen
Nitrogen rich material (greens) are generally wet and break down quickly. They include grass clippings, food scraps, animal manure and plant trimmings.
Browns – Carbon
Carbon rich material (browns) are generally dry and break down slowly. They include dry leaves, paper towels, cardboard, wood ash, cotton, wood and sawdust.
Turn the Pile
In addition to balancing greens and browns, it is important to turn the compost pile regularly to aerate it and promote the growth of beneficial microorganisms. You don’t really need a set schedule for this, just from time to time give the pile a turn over. To effectively turn over the pile you will need a spade and some strong arms and once you get started even a child can help, as you can see.
Conclusion
If you haven’t got a compost pile or system yet then I’d encourage you to start one. As you have read we can make a difference to the amount of trash we produce by composting things that otherwise would be sent to the landfill.
We can question whether something can be naturally composted before throwing it in the trash. It really takes the same effort to throw something on the compost pile as it does throwing it in the trash. There are so many things other than grass clippings or food scraps that are great additions to you compost pile.
