40+ Things You Can Compost

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40+ things you can compost

Things you can compost

Composting is more than just a natural and free fertilizer for your garden. To truly reduce waste, (more than food waste), is a sustainable necessity. Depending on household, composting can remove 20-50% from your household waste, which helps reduce the amount of waste in landfill, and acts as a natural supplement to plants, trees, lawn, and your garden. Even if you compost via curbside pickup, you are still making an impact on what goes into landfill, and what doesn’t.

When food and any organic matter ends up in landfill, it decomposes anaerobically, which means without oxygen. During this process, a greenhouse gas – methane, is produced. Methane is 20-35 time more potent that carbon dioxide at warming our planet. United States Landfills are the United States’ 3^rd largest source of methane gas, according to the EPA.

We can compost more than just food waste – this will help eliminate the amount of methane produced by unnecessary waste in landfills.

Rule of thumb – anything that once lived or was made from a living thing, can be composted. If it’s made with natural items, or ingredients, it will eventually break down.

Wooden toothpicks
Bamboo skewers
Wooden and bamboo chopsticks
Burnt popcorn kernels (yaknow, the ones that didn’t quite pop)
Nut shells – excluding walnut shells – these are toxic to plants
Paper plates & cups – only the ones without the wax coatings
Cardboard boxes – like cereal, pasta, plastic bag boxes – make sure to remove plastic windows if any
Old spices and herbs
Any stale food: pretzels, cereal, crackers, chips, bread, pita bread
Paper bags – Recommend shredding these
Paper Towel rolls – recommend shredding these too
Used Paper towels or napkins
Seeds and pits: pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, avocado pits – try to chop these up so they don’t sprout
Cardboard egg cartons – also recommend cutting or shredding these
Moldy cheese
Vegetable scraps & peels
Egg shells – crush these
Coffee grounds AND Coffee filters
Spoiled milk – dairy or nut works
Old jelly, jam, marmalade, or preserves
Stale or old Beer and wine – pour on top of pile
Wine corks – chop up
Crusts off bread or pizza
Really, any type of food
Nail clippings, from you or your animal – make sure it’s unpolished
Toilet paper rolls – shred these
Hair from your drain or hairbrush – your animals hair works too
100% cotton balls or cotton rounds
Cotton swabs made with 100% cotton and cardboard
Pencil shavings
Paper with no gloss – shredded: business cards, bills, sticky notes, envelopes – make sure there are no plastic windows
Dead houseplants and their soil
Used matches
Fireplace ashes, BBQ ashes
Dead leaves
Clippings from your lawn
Flowers from a dead or dying bouquet
Newspaper – I would shred this for a faster decomposing process
Cotton and wool fabrics
Feathers
Sawdust
Vacuum cleaner bag contents – remove any pennies or bobby pins! Things that aren’t natural
Watermelon Rinds