Ever since I realized that I shouldn't be throwing tissues into the toilet, I've been tossing them into the various garbage containers around the house - bathroom, office, kitchen. I know that this is bad. And I feel vaguely guilty every time I toss one away. Should I be moving towards using cloth handkerchiefs?? I don't know about that... I know old men who use those and, well, it just grosses me out a bit when they haul their used handkerchief out of their pocket to wipe their nose again. And let's not even talk about doing this during a time of Covid... ick!
Tossing Tissues
So is there an alternative? I know that I shouldn't be tossing anything other than TP into the toilet but what to do with the tissues? I did a bit of research and tissues are imminently compostable, either in our city green bin (except during Covid) or even in our own garden compost. In fact, the tissues, composed as they are of wood-fibre/paper products, are a very good source of brown matter (carbon-rich) which is needed to balance out all the green matter (nitrogen-rich). This could actually kill two birds with one stone, because we've run out of brown matter for our garden compost (sawdust, straw, fallen leave). Sooo... tossing my kleenex into the garden compost container instead of the garbage bin would tick two boxes at once.
There are of course, a few caveats in order... only toss kleenex into the compost bin if it hasn't been used to wipe up anything icky: no chemical cleaners, no poop (pet or human), no snot from sick people, no cooking oil. Other than that, we can go to town in tossing our used tissues into our garden compost bin.
Except... fore me, it's a convenience issue. With a garbage can in every room that I frequent, it's easy to just toss the used tissues into the nearest bin. So I'm going to have to figure out a system for collecting used tissues in each room, specifically the office and bathroom. In the past, we've sometimes left an empty tissue box out in the living room and stuffed our used tissues into it. When it was full, it got emptied into the container used to gather our green bin stuff. While we don't have any empty tissue boxes on hand, any little box would actually do the trick. So, that's one small step I can take to keep some stuff out of the landfill and help our composting process at the same time.
Paper Towels
I was then wondering about paper towels... can they go into the compost bin too? There is a bit of debate about the bleaching process used to turn the paper pulp from its normal brown colour to that pristine white colour but... apparently, as long as the paper towels are not advertised as having disinfectant properties or fragrance, they are compostable. Excellent, another potential source of brown matter. Obviously non-bleached, recycled paper towels would be the best. I'm almost wondering if getting those commercial-grade paper towels (the brown ones) might be a better option than an oh-so-puffy Bounty paper towels. Either way, composting paper towels carries the same caveats as the tissues: no chemical cleaners (so no paper towels with Windex on them), no poop, no sick mess and no cooking oil. A paper towel with cooked food residue (including cooking oil) can, however, be tossed into our city green bin which can handle those sorts of things.
Ideally, of course, we'd like to get away from paper towels entirely and just use rags to wipe up messes. It's a convenience thing again, sigh. Maybe I need a sticky note on the paper towel dispenser - "Do you REALLY need to use a paper towel for this mess?" Or maybe, "Could you use a rag instead?" Just as a reminder.
This realization that we might have some potentially easy sources of brown matter within our household got me thinking and... I found a few more household sources.
Toilet Paper and Paper Towel Rolls
Here's some unbleached paper products that are perfect for the compost bin! No bleach, no cleaning products, no ink or toner or anything. Just pure paper product. It does help to tear them up a bit before tossing them into the compost bin.
Paperboard and Cardboard
Mmm... these are slightly trickier. There's concern about the glue holding corrugated cardboard together since it contains boron which, while good for the garden, can be detrimental if there's too much. Then there's the ink and dyes used on the paperboard, things like cereal boxes, tissue boxes and such. For us, using the compost we create for our veggie garden, we're going to assess these on a case by case basis. Some paperboard (e.g. shoe boxes) have very little ink on them... they might make the cut. And, of course, anything that is glossy (like a glossy cardboard box) should not end up in the garden compost, but go to recycling.
Egg Cartons
These are apparently very compostable in a garden compost although... they can harbour traces of salmonella which makes me think they might not be the greatest for a veggie garden. But if it's just for a flower garden, then it's probably good to go.
Brown Paper Bags
We don't get as many brown paper bags as we used to but... they are perfect for the compost as well, which is nice to know.
Office Paper & Newspaper
On my hunt for brown matter for the compost, I thought of shredded office paper and newspaper. One is good, one not so much. Most newspapers nowadays are made with vegetable-based inks so are perfect for the garden compost bin, as long as they are shredded first. Newspaper inserts (like flyers) are not so good - way too much dye, so we'll keep tossing those in the recycle bin. As for office paper... it's been bleached within an inch of its life usually and the ink toner is most definitely not good for the compost. So that too will continue to be tossed into the recycle bin and/or shredded.
Next Small Step
Sooo... in light of the above, I went around the house, sifting through various garbage bins (not the kitchen one) with gloves on, pulling out various brown matter objects destined for our garden compost bin.
The one other thing to consider is that cardboard and paperboard, tissues, paper towel, etc. don't have any real nutrients, as compared to dead leaves or straw or other natural sources of brown matter. So we likely don't want to go too over the top with synthetic brown matter but... any port in a storm at this point.
("Typical household carbon stuff for compost" by kisforkateatkins is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
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