What is Compostable at Home? From Your Kitchen, Garden, and Bathroom

What is Compostable at Home? From Your Kitchen, Garden, and Bathroom

Whether you’re looking to take your gardening to the next level or just reduce the amount of waste you’re putting in a landfill, there’s no better place to start than composting. It’s a great sustainable practice and can leave you with some excellent natural fertilizer.

But knowing what’s safe to put in your compost is important. If you add the wrong material, your compost may not come out right and can harm your plants and the environment and attract unwanted pests. So read on to find out how to keep your home compost happy and healthy.

What is Composting?

Composting is the simple process of taking biodegradable waste and turning it into a nutrient-rich fertilizer that you can put right into your home garden. Once you mix the right waste together, it allows natural decomposers, mostly microbes and fungi but also worms and other animals, to break down waste into a form that’s easy for plants to use.

But it’s not as simple as just throwing some trash into a bucket and seeing what happens. Composting isn’t hard by any means, but you do need to make sure you’ve got the right mix of materials. If you’re missing a key ingredient or add in some trash that you really shouldn’t compost at home, then this can disrupt the balance for great compost.

Quality composting takes four basic ingredients. You need sources of carbon, nitrogen, water, and oxygen. The first three of these come from the waste you’re putting into your compost, and so long as it’s not super densely packed, it’ll have lots of oxygen.

Home Composting

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When most people think of composting, they think of home composting. And if you’ve got a home garden, there’s no reason not to do it! You end up throwing a lot less in the garbage, and your plants will thank you for it too.

The only difficulty with home composting is that it’s entirely on you to make sure your compost comes out right. If you throw in the wrong kinds of waste or don’t mix your green matter and brown matter properly, your compost might not be as good as it could be.

If you accidentally put something actively harmful into your compost, when you put that compost in your garden, it leaks out into the ecosystem. That means while composting is a great way to directly benefit the environment, you do need to be careful with what you add to it for the best results.

But, with just a little bit of time and care, home composting is an extremely rewarding and eco-friendly thing to do.

Commercial Composting

Home composting is great, but unfortunately, just because something is biodegradable or even entirely natural, that doesn’t mean you can compost it at home. And not everyone has use for the organic matter that you get out of composting. This is where commercial composting comes in.

Commercial composting is essentially the same thing as home composting, just on a much larger scale. Companies will pick up your waste just like garbage, but instead of going to a landfill, it can be turned into a natural fertilizer that offsets the use of chemical fertilizer in farming.

A big benefit of commercial composting is that it can often take in a wider range of waste than you can put into your compost at home. They won’t be able to take just any waste, but it can still make a big difference.

What Not To Compost at Home

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Here are some of the things you definitely wouldn’t want to compost at home, and you’ll want to check with your local commercial composter if they’ll accept it in theirs.

Unless it’s fur clippings or manure from an herbivore, basically anything that comes from an animal is a big mistake to compost. Bones, dairy products, meat, and fish are all absolutely biodegradable but are bad for your home compost.

First, they really stink when they start decomposing. Just the odor alone is a big reason to keep them out of your compost. But they’ll also breed dangerous bacteria and will attract annoying pests like rats. Oils and fats should also be left out for this reason.

Other waste is harmful to plants, so won’t make good compost. Coal and charcoal ash will contaminate your compost with toxins harmful to your plants, as will anything that comes from a black walnut tree.

And some garbage is just plain deceptive. You might think tea leaves would make great compost, but unless you’re using loose-leaf tea, you probably shouldn’t be composting it. Many teabags contain plastic, making them a bad choice for home composting.

What are the Benefits of Composting?

There’s so much to love about composting. As far as sustainability goes, there is nothing but upsides. Roughly a third of the waste going out of the average home is entirely compostable. That means when you put that in your garden instead of a landfill, you have a big impact.

But the great thing about composting is that it’s practical. If you’re composting at home, you get a direct benefit to your own garden. And if you go with commercial composting, the compost made with your waste will offset the use of chemical fertilizers in farming.

Composting for your own garden can also save you money on fertilizer, help drain your soil, and balance your soil’s PH levels.

What is Compostable at Home?

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Most of your composting material will come from your kitchen and garden, but there’s plenty of other waste from around the home you can throw in too.

The most important thing to worry about is understanding the difference between brown matter and green matter. You’ll need a good mix of both, so it’s important to be able to notice when you’re putting in mostly one or the other.

Brown Matter

Brown matter is where your compost gets its carbon, which provides energy for the microbes in your compost. It also gives it some structure, which helps keep it aerated.

Brown matter is basically anything dry or woody. That means twigs, dead leaves, paper, cardboard, and anything similar. Most brown matter is actually brown, but there are exceptions.

Green Matter

Green matter is where your compost gets its nitrogen and most of its water too. Nitrogen is the most important part of fertilizer, so this is where your compost gets its kick.

Pretty much anything that’s been recently growing and has got a bit of moisture is green matter. That means fruits and vegetables, but also grass clippings and even coffee grounds. Green matter is pretty diverse, meaning it’s often not green at all.

Compostable Items from the Kitchen

Kitchen Composting Greens

• Fruit scraps: Think apple cores, banana peels, melon rinds, and more! Avoid citrus fruits, though, something like an orange peel will make your compost too acidic and can kill your worms.
• Vegetable scraps: Everything from broccoli stalks and lettuce to veggie skins.
• Plant-based milk (not cow’s milk)
• Fruit seeds and pits (you can cut these up to prevent them from sprouting)
• Tofu and tempeh
• Coffee grounds
• Liquid from canned fruits and vegetables
• Corn husks and cobs
• Expired jam, pasta sauce, and tomato paste
• Beans and other legumes

Kitchen Composting Browns

• Cardboard: Broken-down egg cartons, pizza boxes, paper towel rolls, and more all make great brown matter. Just don’t add cardboard with a plastic coating or heavy dyes.
• Eggshells (crushed beforehand)
• Fruit stems
• Stale bread and pizza crust (bury these in the pile to keep pests away)
• Paper napkins, cups, plates, bags, and towels
• Stale cereal and oatmeal
• Stale crackers, chips, and popcorn
• Rice and pasta
• Nutshells (but not walnuts)
• Wooden chopsticks, toothpicks, and skewers
• Unbleached coffee filters

Compostable Items from the Garden

Garden Composting Greens

• Green leaves
• Weeds (that haven’t gone to seed)
• Grass clippings (make sure to mix in thoroughly or spread thinly on top; otherwise, they might not get enough oxygen)
• Real Christmas trees and wreaths (cut into small pieces)
• Pumpkins
• Sod chunks

Garden Composting Browns

• Dead leaves
• Dead plants, including roots and soil (so long as they aren’t diseased or have an insect infestation)
• Sticks and twigs (broken into small pieces)
• Sawdust and wood chips (mix in thoroughly or spread thinly on top, similar to grass clippings)
• Pine cones and pine needles
• Wood ash (but not coal ash)
• Seed trays and peat pods
• Hay and straw

Compostable Items from the Bathroom

Bathroom Composting Browns

• Eco-friendly toilet paper rolls (shredded)
• Hair and fingernail clippings
• Used tissues (avoid ones you used while sick)
• Real loofas
• Cotton balls and cotton swabs (without synthetic makeup on them)
• Cardboard packaging (without heavy dyes or a plastic coating)
• Old cloths and towels made from natural fibers

Other Compostable Items from Around the Home

Other Composting Greens

• Manure from your pets (from herbivorous pets only)

Other Composting Browns

• Newspaper, junk mail, magazines, and other paper documents
• Envelopes without any plastic
• Sticky notes
• Pencil shavings
• Pet fur and feathers
• Rodent pet bedding (only from herbivorous pets)
• Old clothes made from natural fibers (although you can also consider donating these to a thrift store)

Final Thoughts on Composting

Composting is the perfect place to combine sustainability with a green thumb, and even if you’re not looking to grow a garden, it’s still a great thing to do. It reduces the waste going into landfills and makes some great natural fertilizer for your garden.

While it can take a little bit of effort to get started, composting is absolutely worth it. Your home is full of waste just waiting to be turned into something better, so why not get started today?