On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 16:43:42 +0000, Persephone wrote:


My community picks up recyclables, including office paper.
If yours does too, that might be a better of dealing with the paper.

My city does not ... but even if they did, I would not be donating my
scrap paper to them. I would still compost it, as I do now. My reading on
composting tells me to rely on a hot compost pile and a long aging cycle
(at least 1 year) to detoxify darn near anything that might get dumped
into the pile. Even diesel fuel, PCB's and DDT vanish (IIRC, PCB's need 2
years aging).

What's the worry about trace amounts of bleach that somehow managed to
avoid getting neutralized during processing? By the time it goes through a
compost pile and gets to the garden, it will no longer be the same
chemical anyway. By the time that ink or bleach gets to the garden,
environmental pollution in the form of the dust falling from the air will
be a FAR larger concern ... and, unless you live in Bhopal, you somehow
manage to survive that, right?

So shred, compost, garden, harvest, enjoy. Sweat the small stuff if you
want, but leave the 'parts per trillion' worries to people who get paid to
worry about it.

Bill