Plywood sawdust

[wsommariva]

I do some woodworking and plan to compost my sawdust from lumber.

I'm concerned about plywood dust due to the glue used. Any thoughts?

Thanks

[rot]

..
I believe the new stuff today should be OK. I remember some more knowledgeable than I explaining that some of the nastier stuff in plywoods has been eliminated due to legislation a couple of years back.

It's always a dice roll. What to tolerate and not.

I compost office paper. Office paper means photocopiers and laser printers which means toner not ink which means plastic. Now I've gone through close to a hundred MSDS sheets on the Xerox website and all that toner is non-toxic but it is plastic. I no like plastic but I tolerate that level of it in my compost due to some weird calculus in my brain. Some might not. When I asked Xerox, I got a very brief email a long time ago saying: ' the paper will break down but the toner will not.'

I'm interested to hear what others have to say about plywood but steer clear of the old stuff just the same.

to sense
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[2cents]

No expert here, just practical application.
We were doing a renovation(6-8 yrs ago) and had a 5 x 4 piece of plywood that we mixed mortar on.
It was thrown outside and left on top of asphalt for 2-3 months, never moved.
When it was time to finish the clean up, I went to pick it up and it fell apart. Many little critters had amazingly shredded much of the cellulose and eaten the glue, as it came apart in layers.
The remnants were shoveled directly into the garden. We never noticed a difference in the plants or vegetables from that experience.
I would say they can be composted, but expect many types of large bugs that will want a piece of the action.
Is that composting or just decaying??? Is there a difference???

[wsommariva]

Composting is faster decay, sort of. Put greens and browns together and it cooks up and decays.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll add the plywood dust. I like the calculus.

[toxcrusadr]

The dose makes the poison...and in this case there isn't significant poison after the glue has dried anyway.

[wsommariva]

Thanks for the reply. How about pressure treated wood? I don't use much and I hear that arsnic is no longer used in it.

[rot]

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There must be some ravenous bugs in Ohio.
..

[2cents]

Rot,
we love our little friends, they do so much of the work for those of us without chippers
That plywood housed more bugs than I knew the name of. Revealed were; pill bugs, multiple varieties of centipedes/millipedes, earth worms, red worms, large n small ants, cockroaches, termites, and more. Of course there would have been bugs too small for my eye to see. We have a worm and a white bug and a black bug I can see but can't distinguish. Perhaps baby forms of larger bugs I do recognize.

Except for a few resiliant small chunks of wood it was no more than sawdust n thin lightweight sheets of veneer that would snap under its own weight when moved.

After a different remodel we had a bunch of scrap plywood and 5(near whole) sheets of plywood(stacked on top each other) we threw on top of a wood chip/tree debri pile from the city. 2-3 weeks later we came back to salvage the plywood, between the layers of plywood were the biggest earth worms ever(we used for fishing). Since that plywood was paid for we left them on the compost pile to continue to harvest worms for fishing and the tomato garden.

Always having fun in the garden,
2cents

[toxcrusadr]

Thanks for the reply. How about pressure treated wood? I don't use much and I hear that arsnic is no longer used in it.

The CCA (chromated copper arsenate) has been replaced with copper quaternary amine (IIRC). Basically a type of surfactant that is also toxic to fungi. Think copper soap. I haven't done formal research on it but my first impression is to leave it out, not so much because of human toxicity (we can tolerate a lot of copper in comparison to Cr or As), but because it has the potential to be toxic to the compost pile itself.

[applestar]

Aren't there exterior grade plywood and NOT?

[DoubleDogFarm]

Apple,

Aren't there exterior grade plywood and NOT?

Yes, ACX, CDX are some of the plywood grades. The X stands for exterior or it use to. If I remember correctly they only use exterior glues today. They make pressure treated plywood also.

Eric