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Can you imagine what actually gets into compost

Problem Of Motivation

As in what gets in there that shouldn't go in there. The other day I was taking some compost out of the bottom of the garden compost bin to fertilize some plants. I noticed lots of little bits of tiny plastic particles when I looked closer. There were also items such as tea bags, and things like the twine around carrots.

One interesting thing I noticed is that those stickers you get on apples don't seem to degrade at all. A lot of them seem to be made of just paper, but for some reason they don't degrade. I also noticed some larger items that should not have gotten in there at all... like a dish cloth.

And that's our own family compost bin, which I would believe would nearly always used properly. Public compost bins must be little different from bins for regular waste. Whatever about regular recycling, it's impossible to separate all this out. What's actually done with all this compost? It would be terrible to think it's just spread on the land.

The way I see it, is that the only advantage of having compost bins is that it has an indirect effect on reducing the size of landfills. Other than that, is there any real point in them? Maybe people should be made undergo a brief training course on how to use them!

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Seth Brundle

Problem Of Motivation wrote: »

The way I see it, is that the only advantage of having compost bins is that it has an indirect effect on reducing the size of landfills. Other than that, is there any real point in them? Maybe people should be made undergo a brief training course on how to use them!

The only advantage?
What about the huge advantage of having free fresh nutrient-rich fertiliser?

fritzelly

If the dish cloth is natural fabric it will break down
The stickers will have non natural products on them so not likely to break down for a few hundred years.
Everything breaks down eventually and as long as its not big quantities it's not gonna make much difference unless its like plastic bottles etc which I'm sure get sorted out first.

sullivlo

Why do we need stickers on our apples?

fritzelly

sullivlo wrote: »

Why do we need stickers on our apples?

Well they are edible

Charlie19

Better off not thinking of it.

[Deleted User]

Problem Of Motivation wrote: »

Maybe people should be made undergo a brief training course on how to use them!

Speak for yourself.

Schwiiing

Had the misfourtune of working in the composting area of a recycling centre at 1 point in my life.

All the brown bins get delivered to 1 shed where it's all piled up for a few days to ferment. Then into an 80 degree oven for 5-6 days to break down the vast amount of plastic in the heap. At least 20-30% of what goes into brown bins is non organic material like plastic, metal,glass and rubber.

Out of the oven into a spinning drum to screen out the big bits of plastic and the like and then into another drying oven for another 5-6 days before being loaded into a trailer and sent off to wherever it's processed into bags.

From experience I'd say ~5% of compost bag contents is small bits of plastic.

Problem Of Motivation

fritzelly wrote: »

Everything breaks down eventually

You couldn't be more wrong.

And it's whenever it does break down that the damage will be done. Some plastic breaks down in particles of a size so small that they can penetrate the cell.

Problem Of Motivation

Deleted User wrote: »

Speak for yourself.

No, other members in my home.

fritzelly

Plastic the marvelous invention (really only been in widespread use 50-70 years?) and the bane of the future (and now as is seen in the seas)

fritzelly

Problem Of Motivation wrote: »

You couldn't be more wrong.

And it's whenever it does break down that the damage will be done. Some plastic breaks down in particles of a size so small that they can penetrate the cell.

How am I wrong?
Didn't say it breaks down in to harmless chemicals

tara73

the city where I live atm (not in Ireland) is very keen on organic waste because they built a plant which produces gas with this organic household waste. they also sell the compost which is left as the end product.

but I always ask myself, it's the 'perfect way' to spread fine plastic particles into private gardens all over the region here. because when I look into the green bin people throw their organic waste in there in plastic bags...

it's all so stupid..

Problem Of Motivation

fritzelly wrote: »

How am I wrong?
Didn't say it breaks down in to harmless chemicals

We recently dug up a patch of our garden due to septic tank issues and some of what was buried in the soil nearby (by previous owner of 35 years ago) looked like it could've been there a for only a few month.

It eventually breaks down if it's out at sea where it's exposed to UV light. But I really can't sea many common artificial items (that are buried) breaking down inside a few thousand years. Then again, it depends on their volume I guess.

Capt'n Midnight

Schwiiing wrote: »

Had the misfourtune of working in the composting area of a recycling centre at 1 point in my life.

All the brown bins get delivered to 1 shed where it's all piled up for a few days to ferment. Then into an 80 degree oven for 5-6 days to break down the vast amount of plastic in the heap. At least 20-30% of what goes into brown bins is non organic material like plastic, metal,glass and rubber.

Out of the oven into a spinning drum to screen out the big bits of plastic and the like and then into another drying oven for another 5-6 days before being loaded into a trailer and sent off to wherever it's processed into bags.

From experience I'd say ~5% of compost bag contents is small bits of plastic.

Any bodies ?

Say my name

I've seen posts on Twitter where the problem is just that. Farmers (in the U.K.) getting municipal compost only to find it full of shredded plastic.
And they were the ones who gave a damn to post about it. There's also the one's who just don't care and go ahead and landspread this for the benefit of cheap fertilizer.

Closer to home I myself ordered a load of woodchip for animal bedding off an add on an online site. The seller persuaded me to get a load of "recycled" woodchip on the phone. They turned up in the dark with their load and tipped up. The next morning on inspection it was full of chopped plastic, glass and plastic covered wire as well as chipboard, plywood chopped up.
Well I wasn't having this rubbish being used for animal bedding and then landspread after. Cheque was cancelled and phone call made and they had to pick it back up. The sad thing is he remarked that it was quite popular for bedding livestock. I couldn't believe how people could be so stupid and careless to ruin their soil that they themselves could be eating from. What chance have future generations got with these imbeciles about..

Even these so called biodegradable plastics contain PFAS which harm your health and your animals health when they enter the soil and into the foodweb.

Ubbquittious

I think plastic is so cheap for companies to buy that it's value is actually negative. They must be getting paid money to take the raw material off the oil producer's hands.

So you see companies coming up with ever new creative ways of hiding more plastic into the things people are buying

Blaizes

We’re even ingesting plastic now, it’s been found in humans. It’s beyond a joke.

gozunda

There are the remains of an old estate house near here. The house is gone since the sixties and the once grand gardens are long since returned back to agriculture. Afaik the site has been in continuous habitation for at least 600 years. First as a tower house, then an Elizabethan manor and finally as an mid Victorian pile. The farm yards are still in existence. The peculiar thing is that the detrius of all those centuries of occupation are still very much evident in the soil. Old bottles, bits of china, metal etc. I have came across broken bits of potery from the the late 1700s to the 1800s just poking up out of the soil.. and all this in addition to the fact that the soil is almost black from the constant addition of organic matter over hundreds of years.

Now go to any old house - even modest ones and in the days before refuse disposal - rubbish was buried or discarded in garden middens or wherever. This could include just about anything including old glass bottles, bones, nails, delph, bits of tile, you name it. Human and animal waste was also land spread. Bits of machinery got buried or were left to rot where they were abandoned.

Go further back into medieval times and archaeological sites are a wealth of abandoned detritus and human waste which archaeologists have a field day over.

Go back further and even stone age humans and neantherals dropped the things they used in everyday life in the very places where they lived.

Our modern habits only differ in the huge amounts of waste collected centrally and disposed in landfills and the materials now being included such as plastics and the separation of human waste which now is dealt with as sewage. Otherwise we continue to do what humans have been doing for an awfully long time.

And no that is not an excuse of this behaviour. Just that we appear to have changed very little as a species over time.

Graces7

fritzelly wrote: »

Plastic the marvelous invention (really only been in widespread use 50-70 years?) and the bane of the future (and now as is seen in the seas)

We did not have plastic in my childhood. Washing up bowls etc were enamel.

arybvtcw0eolkf

sullivlo wrote: »

Why do we need stickers on our apples?

Instructions on how to eat them, duh!.

[Deleted User]

Problem Of Motivation wrote: »

As in what gets in there that shouldn't go in there. The other day I was taking some compost out of the bottom of the garden compost bin to fertilize some plants. I noticed lots of little bits of tiny plastic particles when I looked closer. There were also items such as tea bags, and things like the twine around carrots.

One interesting thing I noticed is that those stickers you get on apples don't seem to degrade at all. A lot of them seem to be made of just paper, but for some reason they don't degrade. I also noticed some larger items that should not have gotten in there at all... like a dish cloth.

And that's our own family compost bin, which I would believe would nearly always used properly. Public compost bins must be little different from bins for regular waste. Whatever about regular recycling, it's impossible to separate all this out. What's actually done with all this compost? It would be terrible to think it's just spread on the land.

The way I see it, is that the only advantage of having compost bins is that it has an indirect effect on reducing the size of landfills. Other than that, is there any real point in them? Maybe people should be made undergo a brief training course on how to use them!

Tea bags are compostable.

suicide_circus

Briggs Mushy Gooseberry wrote: »

Tea bags are compostable.

yes but they take an extraordinary amount of time to actually break down. they are still visible in a compost heap for 6 months or more

suicide_circus

Schwiiing wrote: »

Had the misfourtune of working in the composting area of a recycling centre at 1 point in my life.

All the brown bins get delivered to 1 shed where it's all piled up for a few days to ferment. Then into an 80 degree oven for 5-6 days to break down the vast amount of plastic in the heap. At least 20-30% of what goes into brown bins is non organic material like plastic, metal,glass and rubber.

Out of the oven into a spinning drum to screen out the big bits of plastic and the like and then into another drying oven for another 5-6 days before being loaded into a trailer and sent off to wherever it's processed into bags.

From experience I'd say ~5% of compost bag contents is small bits of plastic.

what kind of a depraved degenerate psychopath puts plastic in the brown bin?

Problem Of Motivation

gozunda wrote: »

delph

What's that? I didn't get much when I looked it up!

s7ryf3925pivug

About 5% of my compost is fruit flies.

suicide_circus

Problem Of Motivation wrote: »

What's that? I didn't get much when I looked it up!

Delft. a kind of pottery which takes its name from a town in Holland.

Problem Of Motivation

suicide_circus wrote: »

what kind of a depraved degenerate psychopath puts plastic in the brown bin?

A bloody huge amount.

I once fell out with a flat mate when I pointed out what he did was wrong. The next day I overheard him giving out stink about me to the other house mate. He said I was acting as if the house was mine!

tara73

suicide_circus wrote: »

what kind of a depraved degenerate psychopath puts plastic in the brown bin?

haha, psychopaths...bit harsh. but I don't get it either if you're that caring to seperate rubbish and have an extra bin for organic waste in the kitchen, why then throw it in the brown bin with a plastic bag?? Brains go into shut down when throwing out the waste or what...??

.:P:P

gozunda

suicide_circus wrote: »

Delft. a kind of pottery which takes its name from a town in Holland.

Also spelled delph and delf.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/the-words-we-use-1.302287

Here delph is an old name for a type of china. So anything from plates, dishes, cups etc. A term once commonly used ie delph upon the shelf of the kitchen dresser would have been a normal sight in older houses.

Ger Roe

The post from the OP, illustrates how difficult it is to compost, or recycle effectively, there is always something that manages to get through. It's difficult enough when you are trying to do it properly, but the damage being done by people who don't give a damn, must be massive.

I have been a regular re-cycler (if that's a word) at several council depots over my lifetime and as far as I can see, a lot of people just use the facilities as a dump, simply pouring in filthy and mixed material items at will, and apparently without any consequence. I have never seen anyone asked to remove dirty or unsuitable items and yet I am aware of how precise you have to be with what you attempt to recycle. I often wonder if my efforts are constantly negated by the next person dumping filthy crap into the cages.

I have also never seen anyone being told to pre-crush cans and save on transport, or being told that there are specific types of plastic that can not be recycled in this country. The truth is that our recycle 'industry' is based and paid/subsidised on bulk weight statistics and no one is particularly interested in doing it efficiently or effectively.

Local re-cycle and compost operations need to be taken out of private and even council responsibility and dealt with on a serious level by a national and co-ordinated authority.

We have declared an emergency, we are doing really badly, what are we going to change?.... apart from taxes???? Maybe if we did the job properly by banning the importation of unsuitable packaging and then effectively re-cycling what actually can be dealt with, we might make more progress than simply constantly hitting the people at the bottom of the chain with paying for all the responsibility.

The creation of a waste 'industry'has created a monster that needs us to keep doing things badly, to survive. If we did re-cycle properly and work as a national priority to reduce potential contamination, then our friends in big business would be out of business. All I hear and see are add campaigns by industry representative bodies and associated vested interests (thinly disguised as public minded info campaigns) telling us to carry on and recycle more.

If we were doing it right we should be telling people how to reduce the need to recycle in the first place and how to recycle properly so that we recover more usable material. But that doesn't suit the current agenda where re-cycle success is based on bulk weight of crap shipped off to anywhere in the far east.

A national emergency should be directly managed by a national and accountable body. Our future can not be trusted to commercial interests, particularly with our history of not regulating effectively in this country and all the complicated and ineffective oversight layers we put in place to deflect responsibility. Give the job to someone that wants to do it, with legal clout and environmental and social motivation.