In this article, I’m gonna show you guys how to turn this shredded paper into this fantastic, fertile, beautiful, organic plant food. That’s right, turn your awful, overcharging council rates bill into wonderful composted worm and plant food. Let’s get into it!
**Why Compost?**
**Why Compost?**
It’s often said that we’re moving into a paperless society, and while it might be true that we are in a digital age and using less paper, the fact is that there is still a lot of paper in the world today. But there’s no reason why this paper can’t be repurposed and put to good use back into the garden. All this takes is a little preparation, a small amount of effort, and the rest is done by bacteria, other small animals, and time.
Homemade compost like this is far superior to anything you’re gonna buy commercially because it’s made at home organically. It’s fresh, it’s not high-heat treated or radiated, and it contains microbes that continue to improve your soil and also help plants grow once you put this into your regular garden beds. So in fact, you’re not only lowering your own environmental footprint by recycling and creating compost this way, you’re also saving money and helping your plants to grow better by using your own premium soil additive.
**Turning Shredded Paper into Compost - A Pretty Easy Process**
But I’m going to break it down for you. Get it? Break it down into four easy steps. Now, to help with this process, all you really need is a couple of storage containers—some large ones would be good, a paper shredding machine, of course, which I don’t have here because we do it inside in the home office. Some secateurs help and a tumbler. Now, if you haven’t got a compost tumbler like this, you can use the old pile method; it’s just going to take a little bit longer for you to break down the paper and make the compost.
**Step 1 - Shred Your Paper**
Collect your paper and shred it. Use a large container—I like these plastic bins; they’re perfect and they’re not very expensive. They hold a lot, and they look pretty tidy. Collect all your waste paper—things like bills, speeding fines, old lotto tickets, junk mail from your local council, or letters from your local parliamentary members. All those types of materials are great to be composted down because manufacturers aren’t allowed to produce paper or ink that’s toxic anymore, and by the time it’s composted down, it’s perfectly fine to use in your garden.
However, what you shouldn’t shred and use in your compost is plastics, of course—things like contact-covered textbooks, packaging, credit cards, or even those business envelopes with the clear plastic window. I’ve been guilty in the past of shredding them, and all that happens is you end up with some slivers of that plastic in your final compost, and you have to pick it out. Doesn’t do any harm or anything; it’s just that it’s not ideal, is it?
**Step 2 - Fill the Tumbler**
Fill the tumbler chamber. When I’m composting in one of these things, I like to use a two-thirds to one ratio, meaning filling the tumbler chamber with about two-thirds paper and one-third wet or green waste, such as kitchen scraps and green garden waste. Nice lush plants like galangal stems are great for this. Simply cut into small pieces and throw them in.
In this batch, I also added some used bedding from our guinea pig tractor, as the extra poop and urea adds a little more nutrient to the mix. Manures from guinea pigs, sheep, chickens, cows, horses, and that type of thing are completely fine to use in one of these tumblers or in composting in general. However, I probably don’t need to mention this, but I will for those who are new to composting—what I wouldn’t add is leftover meats, dog, cat, or human poop, as these materials can breed dangerous pathogens that can create diseases. And you don’t want to add this to your vegetable garden—I mean, I certainly wouldn’t be touching it with my hands if it had that stuff in there.
Now, I know there’s some tumbler companies and people say that you can compost, you know, cat and dog manures and human poop and all that… if, yeah, you know, it’s not for me—you can if you want, but I would recommend you didn’t.
**Step 3 - Turn the Tumbler**
Tumbler helps if you put it in a nice convenient place, like somewhere where you’re walking past so that you can remember to just give it a bit of a turn. Turning your tumbler like this aerates the mixing side, and that helps to break down faster. And also, if it’s sitting in one spot, if you can imagine just sitting there, sort of pooling in its juices, it can rot and get all stinky and smelly and not perform and not mix with the other dry ingredients. So, yeah, turning it like that helps a great deal.
In a matter of days, you’ll start to see the mix discoloring and breaking down—it will literally change structure before your eyes. And don’t worry about seeing bugs or fermentation flies invading your tumbler, as these all help the process. Your compost should be ready between six weeks and six months. And the reason why I give such a long timeframe or window is because every composting situation is different. And I know some companies and tumbler companies will say you can make compost in under two weeks or our composter will make fast compost in four weeks or six weeks max. And while that can happen, it’s not always that fast—some materials break down slower than others, some mixes of ingredients break down better than others.
Composting at a warmer time of year will make the breakdown faster than if done in winter. Even here in the subtropics, I’ve noticed our first batch started in autumn has taken much longer than our second started in spring.
**Step 4 - Use the Final Product**
Use this shredded paper compost in the garden. It’ll add nutrients; it’ll help your plants grow nice and healthy because, as well as nutrients, compost has great water-holding qualities and will improve the overall structure of your medium. If you don’t have an immediate use for your compost, store it somewhere to use it later, like in a bucket or in a bin like this, or even underneath a tarp somewhere out of the way.
So, those were the four easy steps on how to turn shredded paper into compost. Like this, now let’s bring you over here, and let’s go through the compost and just have a quick look at it, okay?
So, I wanted you to have a close look at this so that you can see exactly how this paper turned out. Really does look beautiful, doesn’t it? But you will see bits of egg—see that eggshell there? There’s a bit of eggshell.
There’s little bits of… you can still see bits of paper. You will get the odd little piece of paper; this will all break down in the soil anyway. And look here, there’s a little bit of plastic—that’s what I mean. Well, you know, you’re going to get these little shards of plastic if you are like me and forgot to, blooming well—like there’s one; here’s a good example—that’s from the envelope. But anyway, like I said, you can pick them out; it’s not a big deal.
But you’ve got bits of stick; that’s still a bit of galangal root there, and you know you’re going to get the odd pieces of bark or debris that hasn’t broken down—that’s all fine. You can sift this and use that for seedlings if you wanted, or I like to just whack it straight into the garden like this, and it will continue to break down over time and just add good structure to your soil.
One thing I wanted to share with you was just how good this compost smells. Now it’s a little bit weird, but when you smell it like that, it smells really earthy, soily, and nice, you know, like a rainy morning in the forest. It’s got that beautiful smell about it, and that is another way you can tell that your compost is done.
**Additional Tips**
Don’t stress too much about the quantities and the mix that you put in there. It’s amazing, isn’t it, that the majority of it was shredded paper? But when you’re making this mix, you might find that you’ve put in a lot of shredded paper, and you’re turning it, and it’s too dry. If it’s too dry, simply just add a little bit more wet ingredients to it—add some more kitchen scraps, scraps to it or green waste, whatever it is, and that will add moisture to it and make it break down better.
Likewise, if you find the mix is too wet and sloppy, well, then add some more paper to it, and that will dry it out a little bit more. You can continually add materials over time as your compost is being made, but if you’re adding your materials constantly because you want to grow that compost, the end result into a much bigger one and fill that chamber up, that’s fine. It might get a bit heavy in the composter; you can do that. But just remember, it’s gonna take a long time then if you’re continually adding raw materials to compost that’s nearly completed.
If you’ve got a dual-chamber like this, what I do is I pack one full, let it break down, and the other one I use as like an overflow chamber where I can just stick all the overflow compost and kitchen scraps in there. When that first one is done and made, well, then I pack the second one that’s already got this overflow in there, pack it full of paper, and then turn that into the one that I don’t touch. And I’ll use the other one as the overflow chamber again, if you know what I mean. I just swap it around.
If you find that the final mix is still too heavy and gluggy and say a bit like clay, what you can do is use some clay breaker, some gypsum, mix it in with your compost, and that’ll break it up nicely.
And I’m sure you’re wondering, what’s my opinion on the tumbler system versus the bay system? And to be honest, I like both, and I’m using both. I used to use old plastic containers and not a tumbler; it was a sort of similar method except it doesn’t get tumbled around. Both can be used in conjunction with each other. I like the bay system because you can put more in it, and because it’s in the ground, it allows other types of animals like worms to access the compost. But it does take longer for the compost to break down.
A tumbler composter like that does a great job because it’s faster, it’s convenient because you can just sort of stick it in and just turn it every now and again. So, I like both systems and recommend both types.
If you’re wondering, do I recommend that particular brand, the Maze brand of tumbler? Jury’s out at the moment. I’ll be doing a review on it in a couple of weeks, and I’ll let you guys know exactly what I think of this tumbler.
Now, that’s how you turn shredded paper into beautiful compost. You know, there’s something really satisfying about turning your paper bills into plant and worm food.
