The office paper where I work is great for compost...Almost as much %^#@ as
Black Kow Manure....1.0-1.0-1.0.



"Anonymous" wrote in message
newsan.2004.02.12.05.29.36.393554@notarealserver .com...
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 07:22:37 -0800, Tallgrass wrote:



So....your compost heap/unit is self contained, sealed off from the
groundwater?

Linda H., composter of paper

I am relying on research conducted by others (read
http://www.humanmanure.org for details). I don't make a practice of using
my compost pile to get rid of excess PCB's but I feel I can rely upon it
to dispatch all the contaminants it is likely to see in normal use.

It's not a fetish, it's a garden on the edge of a major city.

Bill

Anonymous wrote in
newsan.2004.02.12.05.44.08.772767@notarealserver .com:

Even if there are heavy metals in the ink (a point still open to
contention), there is darned little ink on a page and only a TINY
fraction of that would be the actual offending metal. Moreover,
composting does bind up elemental toxins into safer compounds ...
they, after all, are the building block of 'molecular' toxins.

Every little bit adds up.

I'm curious as to what "safer" molecules are created from lead (or any
other "heavy" metals) by composting.

I have a great deal of confidence in the effectiveness of the
microbiology of a compost pile. While I would not lace it with
strychnine and then dine on it directly, that's because I don't
deliberately eat compost directly under any circumstances. I would be
completely willing to dose a fresh pile, compost it as per my usual
custom and then use it in my garden after a 2 year aging period.

What a great philosopher's stone that would be ... garbage in, gold out.
Unfortunately I still have questions about the transmutablity of many of
the reactants.

Might be marginally off-topic, but I saw this in another group:
[Article] French peat bog reveals thousands of years of mining pollution.
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_u...%3CFXWOb.19025$Wa.10981@news-
server.bigpond.net.au%3E

"Once lead is locked up in organic material such as peat, it tends to
stay put rather than being washed away by water. "

wonderful i'll print this and compost it


"Pen" wrote in message
om...
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.

It only takes about 1 month to compost a few inches of paper in a worm
composter. I've figured that if the worms are alive and healthy then
the compost can't be too bad.