Using Shredded Paper for Coop Litter - As Good As Wood Chips?

[gtaus]

Lots of great comments, will try to respond to some. Thanks.

How about when she is opening the mail, reading the newspaper, or whatever generates the paper, you leap up and offer to take the paper to the recycling bin for her.

If you don't think I jump when Dear Wife commands, then you have not been paying attention. However, we are not always together at the same time and that is why paper things I could shred end up in the mixed recycle bin. If I am there at that time, I do take the paper from her when she is done with it and take it to my shredder in my home office.

Lol. Only he does not want it in the recy bin. He wants it at the shredder. That is an option, though, for him to take it where he wants it. IF he's present when she processes it.

No, I just don't want the paper products I could shred thrown in with the mixed recyclables. Once in the bin, I have to "dumpster" dive to retrieve the paper. I don't have a problem with her leaving the paper besides the recycle bin, and, in fact, I am working on maybe getting another bin set up for just paper. At any rate, it's only like 20 feet from the recycle bin to the shredder in my office. Not a big deal.

Yes. My thought was the offer to carry it doesn’t need to come with a commitment on where he takes it. Now he might end up needing to clear up after her non-paper items too. But everything has a price

Dear Wife is more consistently cleaning up after me. I cannot lie.

It's [recycle bins for separate items] just different in different areas in America.

Yes, until a few years ago, we had to separate our glass, aluminum, steel, plastic, and papers in separate bins. I think we had 4 recycle bins in the house/garage at one time. But in the last couple of years, they decided we could just dump all our recyclable items into one mixed bin. That makes recycling easier for most people, and I do encourage recycling so that is a good thing having mixed bins. Unfortunately for me, it also means that if any paper gets thrown into our large recycle bin, now I have to rummage through the bin and pull the paper out that I can shred.

And I agree that different places in the USA most probably have different requirements in regards to separating the recyclable items.

You have inspired me, @gtaus. I took the shreads, that were sitting in the shredder, to the chicken coop and put them the nest boxes. I then lined the shredder bin with a large Wal-Mart bag. And because I was in the recycle mind set, I set up my coffee ground drying rack in the garage, so I can use it thru the winter.

I am glad some good is coming out of this thread. I hope using free paper shreds work as well for you as they are for me. If they do, then it's a win-win in that you get free litter/bedding for your chickens, while at the same time you are reducing the amount of stuff that ends up in the landfill.

Let me add, that although we have recycle bins in my town, I am not convinced that any of our stuff is ever actually recycled and used in future products. Years ago, when I lived in Minneapolis, MN, the Star Tribune did an investigative study on the recycling program in the Twin Cities. Would it surprise you that they followed all our separated recycle bins from the station and discovered that the company just hauled everything to a landfill and dumped all the recyclables into one big garbage pile? Although everyone was mandated to separate our recyclable garbage at home, everything ended up in one big garbage heap at the landfill. There were no programs to take all those products and reuse them. Evidently, it was cheaper to make new products with new materials.

This is why I try to reuse and/or repurpose as much material as I can right here at home. At least I know how my paper shreds are being repurposed for the chickens, and then turned into compost for the garden, and ultimately used to grow better food for the family. None of the paper I shred at home ends up in any landfill or garbage dump.

 

[gtaus]

All countries in Europe have some kind of recycling system. But they differ a bit from country to country. Recycling is not difficult if you have the habit of doing so.
And its a lot better for the environment if we reuse our garbage. We need way less new materials.

I have lived in France a couple of times when I was university student (1980's), and in Italy for a few years (1990's) while I was in the Navy. I always thought France and Germany were years ahead of the USA in terms of the Green movement. I think Italy is a mixed bag. In northern Italy, the streets and towns were pretty clean.

But I was stationed in southern Italy, in Naples, and frankly the people there just threw their garbage out on the streets and highways. Natives said they had a corrupt government and garbage disposal was not an important service for them. So, people in Naples would end up throwing whole bags of garbage out the windows while driving the car down the highway. Garbage would pile up and overflow the community garbage bins because nobody would come and haul the trash away. Many times I would go home and see these dumpster bins on fire because people got fed up with all the garbage piling up. Boy, did the burning garbage smell bad!
You don't see that in the movies.

Anyway, from that experience, I cannot pass up garbage in the parking lots where I live without picking it up and tossing it into the nearest garbage can. OK, not something medical, of course, but most trash that is likely to be found on the ground from someone opening up a car door and something drops out. Fortunately, where I live, there are not too many people that toss out garbage into the streets. When I am out on the riding mower at home, I always carry an extra plastic bag to pick up any trash that might get tossed into the ditch alongside our main road. I also clean the ditch at my neighbor's house if there is anything that needs to be picked up. I just cannot stand seeing garbage on our property. It does not take me much time to clean up a bit, and it makes me feel better about where I live.

Maybe that is why I am so glad that I am converting some of our garbage paper products into paper shreds for the chickens. It's just another way for me to clean up my environment and make something useful out of what others might just consider trash.

 

[3KillerBs]

Would it surprise you that they followed all our separated recycle bins from the station and discovered that the company just hauled everything to a landfill and dumped all the recyclables into one big garbage pile? Although everyone was mandated to separate our recyclable garbage at home, everything ended up in one big garbage heap at the landfill. There were no programs to take all those products and reuse them. Evidently, it was cheaper to make new products with new materials.

No, I am not at all surprised. I've known for years that the recycling materials go straight to the same landfill with the rest of it.

Recycling is not an efficient process, being more labor-intensive and energy-intensive than processing raw materials so it's more expensive.

 

[Sally PB]

I set up my coffee ground drying rack in the garage, so I can use it thru the winter.

More info, please? Pictures?

Does anyone get coffee grounds from Starbucks? Some stores will have a place where they put bags of grounds. There's a new Starbucks near where I shop, so I'm going to stop in there and ask, if they don't have something like that already.

 

[BDutch]

About 15 years ago I was in the south of Italy (south of Napoli) where the garbage piled up at every corner of the streets. Gross. Never seen anything like that before. But I think this problem is resolved in the meantime.

Here they had /have problems with reuse of certain garbage too. Plastics , especially the dirty plastics are difficult. Part of the plastic waste is not recycled but burned in special waste ovens to produce energie.

Old metals, glass, paper, cardboard , textiles and furniture are valuables. The industry is recycling (and downcycling) a lot. I have seen documentaries of some of the reclycling processes. The industry is constantly looking for useful and profitable purposes of old materials. We don’t have landfills anymore.

Nowadays the industry also uses more and more plant based (regrow) fabrics instead of the polluting plastic/ chemical fabrics.
For instance: wood fibre , paper flock and wool fibre isolation instead of glass wool or rock wool (which costs lots of energy to produce and is bad for you’re health to work with). Plant based isolation is good for CO2 reduction where the glass/rock wool adds more CO2 into our atmosphere.

 

[RojoMarz]

More info, please? Pictures?

Does anyone get coffee grounds from Starbucks? Some stores will have a place where they put bags of grounds. There's a new Starbucks near where I shop, so I'm going to stop in there and ask, if they don't have something like that already.

My drying rack is pretty crude. It's a simple frame that DH covered in window screen. We then discovered the window screen is not fine enough, coffee grounds fell thru. I then layer landscaping fabric over the window screen. There is enough landscaping fabric to fold back over the dreams to make a cover. I then lay a board over the top, so the cover didn't blow up. The cover is needed to keep the grinds from blowing away. After the grounds are dry, I put them into the little compost bin (only used for grounds). I'll occasionally take the bin and empty it onto the poop board.

Have you seen this thread that @humblehillsfarm started a while back?

 

[gtaus]

I've known for years that the recycling materials go straight to the same landfill with the rest of it.

Recycling is not an efficient process, being more labor-intensive and energy-intensive than processing raw materials so it's more expensive.

Which is why I try to live by the motto: Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle - in that order. I hope that someday we get to the point where our recyclable material is just made out of stuff that will compost down into natural material. I'm not at all convinced that our recyclable material is actually seeing a second life as a new product. So, better that we make it so that is breaks down naturally and does not pollute the landfills for the next 100+ years.

Anyway, I'm doing what I can to shred paper products at home and using them with the chickens. Free bedding for my chickens, and will eventually end up as garden compost.

 

[gtaus]

Does anyone get coffee grounds from Starbucks? Some stores will have a place where they put bags of grounds. There's a new Starbucks near where I shop, so I'm going to stop in there and ask, if they don't have something like that already.

I think if I lived in town I would look into things like that. But I only go into town maybe twice a month. From what I understand, coffee grounds make good compost and also I see people using coffee grounds in worm bins.

I think people who pick up waste food from restaurants and use that to feed their chickens is a great way of reducing food products heading to the dump. I once read an article that suggested every restaurant should have a chicken coop in the back. That way, they could feed their kitchen scraps to the birds, get fresh eggs from them, and have fresh meat if needed. Maybe that would work in a small country restaurant, but I don't see that working in most towns or cities.

 

[RoyalChick]

More info, please? Pictures?

Does anyone get coffee grounds from Starbucks? Some stores will have a place where they put bags of grounds. There's a new Starbucks near where I shop, so I'm going to stop in there and ask, if they don't have something like that already.

I have done that a couple of times but was put off the idea because they packed them in a plastic bag.
Naively I thought I would have to bring my own bucket!
I use my own coffee grounds and tea bags as bedding but that is just a tiny amount thrown in with everything else.
The Starbucks bag sure made the coop smell good though!

 

[gtaus]

About 15 years ago I was in the south of Italy (south of Napoli) where the garbage piled up at every corner of the streets. Gross. Never seen anything like that before. But I think this problem is resolved in the meantime.

I hope so. I was in Italy in the 1990s. Lots of great people there, but garbage everywhere.

The industry is recycling (and downcycling) a lot.

What is downcycling?

Nowadays the industry also uses more and more plant based (regrow) fabrics instead of the polluting plastic/ chemical fabrics.

That's great. I think we in the USA are slowly moving to more environmentally friendly solutions, too.

We don’t have landfills anymore.

I have no idea where our garbage ends up, in a local dump or landfill, but it must be out of sight and out of mind. I have seen some documentaries of ships full of garbage products being shipped overseas to third world countries and dumped there. I don't know of anybody who wants a landfill in their backyard, so I hope we move to more natural products instead of plastics. Sometimes I can reuse or repurpose plastic products we get at home, but mostly they get tossed into a recycle bin for disposable.