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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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Problem Of Motivation

Say my name wrote: »

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.

The short-chain varieties aren't as bad though. And I'm assuming they degrade faster in the environment.

Long-chain PFAS, particularly perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), have been linked to poor health outcomes, including increased cholesterol and lower fertility.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/geoscience/compostable-food-packaging-may-contaminate-compost

Leg End Reject

Briggs Mushy Gooseberry wrote: »

Tea bags are compostable.

Not all, some have plastic at the seams.

tara73

Ger Roe wrote: »

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.

excellent post, hits the nail on the head with everything. but important to say it's not a specific irish propblem, it's a world problem.

MrMusician18

Ger Roe wrote: »

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.

When you think of everything you put in your black or recycling bin, how much of it did you really ever want? The vast vast majority of household waste is there for the convenience of business to make their processes more efficient.

Biodegradable

Briggs Mushy Gooseberry wrote: »

Tea bags are compostable.

Who told you that?

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/single-plastic-tea-bag-can-shed-billions-of-microplastic-particles-study-1.4032255

Odelay

suicide_circus wrote: »

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

The “let someone else sort it brigade”?

s7ryf3925pivug

Arjun Green Odometer wrote: »

Instructions on how to eat them, duh!.

they just say “Do not eat label”

20Wheel

sullivlo wrote: »

Why do we need stickers on our apples?

Place teeth here.

[Deleted User]

Biodegradable wrote: »

Who told you that?

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/single-plastic-tea-bag-can-shed-billions-of-microplastic-particles-study-1.4032255

They have always gone into our food waste bin, which get thrown in with the dung in the yard and spread on the fields. They are completely disintegrated in just a few months.

AlphabetCards

fritzelly wrote: »

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.

Wrong, plenty of 'natural' fibres wont break down.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Briggs Mushy Gooseberry wrote: »

They have always gone into our food waste bin, which get thrown in with the dung in the yard and spread on the fields. They are completely disintegrated in just a few months.

In fairness, although they go in my compost for the garden, they may breakdown and disintegrate but they do contain lots of micro beads of plastic which can work their way into the food chain.

Biodegradable

Briggs Mushy Gooseberry wrote: »

They have always gone into our food waste bin, which get thrown in with the dung in the yard and spread on the fields. They are completely disintegrated in just a few months.

They're still made of plastic though.

Harry Palmr

Tea bags are tea bads.

I rip mine open to dispose of the actual tea, the bags go in the green bin cos that's where they actually belong.

Speedsie

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Tea bags are tea bads.

I rip mine open to dispose of the actual tea, the bags go in the green bin cos that's where they actually belong.

Most tea bags have polypropylene in them, so they belong in the black bin not the green bin!

Ubbquittious

I have never found any teabags when I use the compost but i do find the little apple stickers. It tis a pity it doesn't say on the box of teabags whether there is plastic in the bags or not