In message
,
Tim+ writes
Chris J Dixon wrote:
Another John wrote:

In article ,
charles wrote:

"made from potato starch" was on the last one received here. ...

Yep: National Trust annual kilo-through-the-post.

Heavily printed with the message, in the now-familiar ticking-off
school-marmish tone: "Do not put in your recycling. Put in your
compost." [1][2]

An increasing proportion of my periodicals are arriving in
such wrappers. They generally suggest that they may be placed in
the garden waste bin.

I checked with my council, but they replied

"Unfortunately this cannot go into our garden wastes bin. What
the producers of your magazine possible have not told you is that
if this goes to an open windrow facility, which is what we use,
it could end up being windblown around the site and become
litter. The information provided is applicable to what is called
in-vessel composting, which we do not use."

I guess few others will actually check, so they are going to get
lots of contamination in their waste.

I have attempted to get this point over to some of these
publishers, and have been met with a deafening silence. :-(


Another one to be aware of if your council collects food waste. The
popular starch based bags dont digest in the anaerobic digesters all have
to be screened out as the digesters dont get hot enough to break them
down. The bags make a nuisance of themselves as that clog up the blades of
the bag bursting machines. Unlike other plastics the bags stretch like
chewing gum around the blades and have to be frequently manually removed.

The councils dont make an issue of it because theyre desperately keen to
stop food-waste going into landfill. The best option is either to use
nothing in your food waste bin or just a bit of newspaper.

I'll tell my wife that. She saves the compostable sleeves from magazines
etc especially for food waste (not that we often have any).

But as for them not composting very quickly, in my own garden compost
bins I find they disintegrate quite soon.




--
Ian