Kitchen Garden Forum

Hello kitchen gardeners,

When emptying my vacuum cleaner into the wheeley bin today, I had a thought that rather than sending this dust off to land fill it could be added to the compost heap as a kind of soil improver.

Does anyone do this with their waste dust or have an idea why this might be a bad idea?

Many thanks

MM

Hi Mr Markey

Have done it for a number of years now.

As we have three long haired dogs there is also a fair amount of their fur goes in the compost sometimes. This does take a little while longer to break down but we get a good useful end result and have found nothing to be detrimental about doing it.

Thanks Pa.

Hello Mr Markey. Yep, I put the vacuum emptyings into my compost too. When I cut my husbands' hair, that goes in as well.

Hair doesn't break down very quickly, if at all, but birds take it away for nesting. Most of what I hoover up from the lobby is soil so it's only right it goes back on the garden.

I also have been putting it in the compost heap for ages too. We have wool carpets so I know it will break down if the carpet fluff gets in. I wouldn't use it from carpets with man-made fibres.

I'd never have thought about doing this! What a great shout. I've got two cats (one is a continual moulter)! This is useful Thank you.

This post has me thinking... would this relate to tumble-dryer lint as well? Especially after a wool wash?

I have no experience of how long tumble dryer lint takes to breakdown, if it does, or if it has any adverse content. Guess it depends on what the content is that makes those lint pieces smell sweet. Could be one of those times when you need to carry out your own experiment on a small scale first.

If it is anything like the material used on teabags I find they take ages, we now tend to split them, after they have dried, as we put them in the compost.

Tea bags are plasticised paper. They will leave little plastic mesh bags behind that will not compost. I empty them out too.

Clothes lint will probably have man made fibres in there that will not compost (can't seem to find socks made from pure cotton anymore ). Whether this is a problem I don't know. As for vacuum cleaner bags, I don't use what's in them for the same reason I don't use old carpet in the garden - synthetic fibres, glues, possible chemical treatments, and carpets act as a sink for goodness knows what settles down from shoes etc.

Besides which, both tumble drier fluff and vacuum cleaner contents are not enough composting material to get excited about saving.

Going to have to disagree with you Tony.

It is our experience that eventually tea bag material does rot down, true it takes quite some while to do so. If teabags dissolved quickly we'd have more people reading tea leaves still (ok, tea dust in the case of tea bags)

As for the contents of vacuum cleaners not being worth saving, on their own they might not be but surely the thing about compost is that it is the varied constituents that make up the whole.

addendum to above

We find the PG pyramid bags break down quicker than Typhoo circular ones.

There is a newish tea firm on the block, I think they are called Tea-Pigs, which produce lovely herb teas but the tea bags certainly don't rot down in a commercial setting. We drink about five cups of different herb teas a day and all the bags go into the compost: most of them you never see again, so they appear to rot down very quickly, especially the organic ones, but the Tea-Pig ones seem to be made of fine plastic netting and they turn up again and again when the compost is spread in the garden. So, I never buy those now.

Pa Snip wrote:Going to have to disagree with you Tony.

It is our experience that eventually tea bag material does rot down, true it takes quite some while to do so. If teabags dissolved quickly we'd have more people reading tea leaves still (ok, tea dust in the case of tea bags)

As for the contents of vacuum cleaners not being worth saving, on their own they might not be but surely the thing about compost is that it is the varied constituents that make up the whole.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... egradeable

And there are all sorts of varied materials I'd rather not find on my compost. Including the shredded kitchen cabinets in New Horizons.

Hi Again Tony

The link you posted leads to an article from 2010 which states
Another green option are increasingly popular Japanese-style pyramids such as "tea temples" manufactured by teapigs.co.uk, containing whole leaf (as opposed to ground) and arguably better-tasting tea. The company has recently changed its entire range from nylon mesh to a 100% compostable material made from corn starch.

In contrast to that in Monika's post above we read
but the Tea-Pig ones seem to be made of fine plastic netting and they turn up again and again when the compost is spread in the garden. So, I never buy those now.

Age old scenario applicable to gardening, what works for one may not be satisfactory for others.