Composting paper grocery bags?

lotusindigo · Sat Oct 22, 2011 4:20 pm

I have a pile of paper grocery bags from Whole Foods Market. Would this be good brown material to compost? I'm mostly concerned about the ink they use on the bags.

rainbowgardener · Sat Oct 22, 2011 4:54 pm

Definitely a good material and don't worry about the ink. Besides being a miniscule quantity of substance compared to your pile, inks for some years now have been soy based.

lotusindigo · Sat Oct 22, 2011 11:31 pm

Thanks very much! Has anyone every used paper bags for sheet mulching, for example instead of cardboard?

Bloody Boots · Sat Oct 22, 2011 11:49 pm

Yes, and they work pretty well, though we had better luck with a double layer of them.

cynthia_h · Sun Oct 23, 2011 3:13 am

I just put a large brown bag into the compost bin tonight, together with its contents: moldy rolls and blanched tomato peels.

It wasn't worth dealing with everything separately, so I told DH just to put the whole shebang into the bin. Later, I'll tear off the top part of the bag and mix the strips of bag around in the bin, but the bottom 1/4 or so, with the dead rolls and the tomato peels, will just have to shift for itself.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9