05-04-2023, 10:29 AM
We've been questioning the advice to put paper in the home compost bin. Everything you read on how to make compost includes adding paper. BUT, bleaching is part of the paper-making process, so even with "unbleached" papers*, there is still some and while its disposal may be less harmful than plastic, I wonder if the antibacterial effect of the bleaching has a detrimental impact on compost. For a long time I put paper into the compost bin, but over a period of years our compost seemed to deteriorate and we stopped doing it. No paper. And over the last year the compost has got better.
In the paper v. plastic argument, I still think paper is better because at least it doesn't end up as microplastic throughout the environment. I did read an article recently about soil fungi, and it included a snippet that several fungi have been discovered to "eat" at least some plastics. Hopefully they can eventually be put into wide use, and hopefully won't themselves have other harmful flow on effects. Maybe they will at least eat up the supposedly "home compostable" plastic the supermarkets pat themselves on the back for giving us. That doesn't break down properly in the compost and the plastic is so horrible it can't be used for anything else.
*I checked a pack of recycled paper serviettes and it said "not re-bleached". So recycled paper, which was bleached in the original manufacture. So really, the only thing we can (and should) do is reduce the amount of paper and plastic we use and try to reduce/re-use the packaging we get when we buy stuff. Sometimes easy to do, often not.
Back to the original post - I think wool is vastly superior on several levels, but not all. Part of the problem is the processing after it comes off the sheep. And there are practicality issues for the end products. Polyesters are not as benign as we thought, but you really can't beat the ability to repeatedly machine wash everyday clothes.
In the paper v. plastic argument, I still think paper is better because at least it doesn't end up as microplastic throughout the environment. I did read an article recently about soil fungi, and it included a snippet that several fungi have been discovered to "eat" at least some plastics. Hopefully they can eventually be put into wide use, and hopefully won't themselves have other harmful flow on effects. Maybe they will at least eat up the supposedly "home compostable" plastic the supermarkets pat themselves on the back for giving us. That doesn't break down properly in the compost and the plastic is so horrible it can't be used for anything else.
*I checked a pack of recycled paper serviettes and it said "not re-bleached". So recycled paper, which was bleached in the original manufacture. So really, the only thing we can (and should) do is reduce the amount of paper and plastic we use and try to reduce/re-use the packaging we get when we buy stuff. Sometimes easy to do, often not.
Back to the original post - I think wool is vastly superior on several levels, but not all. Part of the problem is the processing after it comes off the sheep. And there are practicality issues for the end products. Polyesters are not as benign as we thought, but you really can't beat the ability to repeatedly machine wash everyday clothes.