Surprising Compostable Home and Garden Green and Brown Things

Jan 3, 2012
Susan Morris

Finished Home Compost Ready for Garden - suezoo

Resolve to compost more things at home to reduce local landfill waste. Beyond basic greens and browns of home composting, there are compostable surprises.

Green and Brown Materials in Composting

Zero Waste Scotland's Composting at home guide promotes home composting as easy and requiring a 50:50 mix of both green and brown materials. The recent 'how to' guide defines green materials as containing lots of nitrogen, breaking down quickly and helping to keep the compost moist. In contrast, brown materials are things containing lots of carbon, breaking down more slowly and adding structure to home made compost. Brown materials are characterised, in the Zero Waste Scotland Composting at home guide, as creating air pockets which are important for air circulation.

Usual Suspects Composted at Home

Given the basics of composting greens and browns from household and garden waste, the usual suspects composted at home include the green materials of cut flowers, fruit scraps and vegetable peelings, garden and house plants, grass cuttings, tea leaves, tea bags, coffee grounds and young annual weeds. Brown materials frequently composted at home are egg shells, egg boxes, straw and hay, paper, toilet roll tubes, scrunched up brown paper bags, envelopes with 'windows' removed and torn up cardboard from food packaging and bruised or cut up cardboard from deliveries.

There are many more things from the home and garden that are compostable at home. With reassurance some things are readily added to a home's must compost list. Other household items will not be for individuals who have not signed up to zero waste and could be considered extreme composting.

Extreme Home Composting in the Garden

Colleen Vanderlinden, in her 75 Things You Can Compost, But Thought You Couldn't article published on Planetgreen Discovery in 2009, stimulated discussion on her cited items. Vanderlinden writes that "it might be a good idea to bury these [personal] items in your pile. Just sayin'" - cardboard tampon applicators and latex condoms. Used facial tissues, hair from your hairbrush, old loofahs, nail clippings and urine are included, by Vanderlinden, as compostables from the bathroom. While hair from your hairbrush, like pet hair from pet brushes and the contents of the Dyson cleaner are palatable for composting and later using as a soil conditioner in the garden, nail clippings and old loofahs will lack appeal to many individuals. Garden composting urine from the home is extreme although unsurprising to be on Vanderlinden's list given that horticultural folklore from large country estates feature tales of young gardening apprentices (usually boys and some would argue must be a boy's urine) urinating on the composting heaps to speed up decomposition.

2012 Resolution to Composting More in Home and Garden

Resolving to do more composting brings attention to things beyond food and garden detritus. Green materials from kitchen vegetables scraps are available all year around and so are the brown materials of the human and pet hair and dust collected in a home's vaccum cleaner and seasonally the used matches and the wood ash from a multi-fuel stove or outdoor fire pit.

Old wool clothing that can not be recycled or upcycled by pulling down and knitting, such as commercially produced wool socks, can be cut into smaller pieces and added to garden compost bins or cone composters. In the home office, pencil shavings and paper receipts (not thermal receipts) can be collected and composted. Such smaller things, added to the usual home composting items, will increase the variety of things composted at home, improve the biodiversity of the bugs in your home made compost and reduce household waste towards zero waste.