Title: [GreenYes] Re: plastic? or wax? coated milk cartons
I've composted milk cartons occasionally in my backyard system. The
plastic coating ends up as a thin grey crinkly film of pretty
degraded plastic; everything else decomposes quite readily into
humus. Ditto for many of the paper drink cups and glasses that
abound in Berkeley since we banned styrofoam containers almost twenty
years ago. It's easy to pull the plastic out of the finished compost
by hand, but I remember it was quite a problem at Urban Ore's Compost
Farm because it plugged the industrial screens and made life
miserable for our employees who were trying to produce a saleable
product, meaning no resistant plastic bits of anything.
Waxed box cardboard decomposes readily with no plastic residue.
Dan Knapp
Urban Ore, Inc.
On Nov 29, 2007, at 7:29 AM, M.Simons wrote:
>
> On Thu, 29 Nov 2007, Eric Lombardi wrote:
>> I think Matt is correct on this ... in fact, I was told at a USCC
>> conference a couple years ago that wax was phased out almost 20 years
>> ago!!
>
> I think a good question is: When a gabled coated-paper milk/juice
> carton
> decomposes/composts, what is left of the plastic if it's a plastic
> coated
> box?
>
> --
> MS
>
> >
>
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