Home gardeners don’t need to limit their compost piles to grass clippings, vegetable peels, eggshells, and other kitchen scraps. Most organic materials can be composted in an indoor or outdoor compost bin as long as those composting ingredients are kept moist, aerated, and given enough time to break down. To get you started, here are 18 often overlooked items you can add to compost piles to reduce waste, create more compost, and make your home and garden more eco-friendly.
1. Bulky Garden and Kitchen Waste
Cornstalks, pumpkin vines, and other bulky plant debris left over from the gardening season can be tossed into compost piles as long as they are free of disease, pests, and weed seeds. Watermelon rinds, corn cobs, and pineapple tops often end up in the trash, but even these tough items are compostable.
2. Natural Decor
If you decorate for the holidays with jack-o-lanterns, hay bales, wreaths, and garlands made of natural materials, you can compost those items, too. Christmas trees can also be composted, although they’ll break down faster if you shred them or cut them into smaller pieces first.
3. Fruit Pits and Nut Shells
Prunings from fruit trees are often composted, but don’t throw out those nut shells, cherry and peach pits, and avocado seeds after eating them. When given enough time in the compost pile, these items will all turn into compost.
Beware of adding materials from black walnut trees to a composter. Nuts, wood, and leaves from these trees may still release the toxic chemical juglone after you compost them.
4. Compostable Paper Items
Used paper towels, napkins, paper straws, paper coffee filters, and paper plates are all biodegradable, so don’t be shy about adding them to your compost pile. However, like other carbon-rich items, paper products break down slowly in the absence of nitrogen, so remember to mix in some nitrogen-rich kitchen scraps any time you add paper pieces to your composter.
5. Hair, Fur, Feathers, and Nail Clippings
While it’s common practice to discard hair and pet fur outside as nesting materials for wild birds, long hair can be a tangle hazard for wildlife and prove hazardous. For a safer solution, place hair, fur, nail clippings, and undyed feathers in the compost bin. After all, these items are all composed of keratin, a biodegradable protein.
6. Some Shredded Paper
Because glossy magazine paper and some colored inks may contain materials you don’t want in your compost pile, always be choosy about the paper products you compost. Paper items labeled as “compostable,” brown paper lunch bags, and newspapers printed with soy-based ink are usually safe to compost. However, shred these items first to help them decompose faster.
7. Dryer Lint
Compost dryer lint only if it’s produced from 100% natural fabrics, like cotton and hemp. Lint generated from polyester and other synthetic fibers should be thrown in the trash because it’s not biodegradable.
8. Vacuum Dust and Dust Bunnies
Dust collected from around your home and gathered up in your vacuum is usually compostable. Just pick out synthetic materials, like small bits of carpet and stray pennies, which won’t break down in a compost bin.
9. Cardboard
Like shredded paper, cardboard can be turned into compost as long as the cardboard isn’t glossy or covered in colored inks. Pizza boxes, cereal boxes, paper towel tubes, and cardboard egg cartons all fall into this category, although they should be shredded or torn into small pieces for faster composting.
Use large pieces of cardboard for lasagna gardening or as biodegradable weed barriers.
10. Coffee Grounds and Tea Bags
Many gardeners overlook coffee grounds and loose-leaf tea, but these natural items make excellent compost. You can even compost tea bags, strings and all, as long as the bags are made of paper or muslin and don’t contain staples or microplastics.
11. Wine Corks
Some modern wine corks are made of synthetic materials or are coated in plastic, which is not compostable. However, if you have wine corks made of natural cork, you can add them to your compost pile as carbon-rich ingredients. For faster composting, cut corks into small pieces and mix them with kitchen scraps and other green or nitrogen-rich composting materials.
12. Seaweed
Coastal gardeners can use nitrogen-rich seaweed to bulk up compost piles or apply seaweed as a weed-suppressing mulch. However, it’s important to only gather seaweed from clean areas and with proper permission. To reduce your impact, only harvest loose seaweed that’s not attached to rocks, shake seaweed as you go to dislodge insects and other small critters, and never collect more than 1/10 of the seaweed you find.
13. Natural Loofahs
Genuine loofahs are made from dried gourds and are fully compostable once they’ve reached the end of their usefulness. If you’re committed to zero-waste living, you can even grow your own natural loofah sponges by planting loofah gourd seeds in spring.
14. Wooden Skewers and Toothpicks
Sawdust and wood shavings are commonly added to compost piles as carbon-rich ingredients, but you can also find other wood items around your home that make excellent compost. Bamboo skewers, for example, can be used as “brown” ingredients in compost piles, but you can also compost wooden popsicle sticks, wooden toothpicks, and compostable wooden cutlery.
15. Cotton Balls and Cotton Swabs
Cotton swabs and cotton balls are compostable as long as they’re made of 100% cotton and don’t contain plastic or synthetic sticks. For food safety, avoid composting cotton items that have come in direct contact with chemicals you don’t want in your food garden, such as nail polish remover.
16. Natural Fabrics and Fibers
Clothing items that still have life left in them can be donated to charity shops or shared with friends, but if you have clothing made from 100% cotton, hemp, or another natural fabric that’s too bedraggled to be regifted, recycled, or repaired, shred that fabric and add it to your composter. Natural burlap, rope, and twine can also be composted if you cut it into smaller pieces.
17. Ashes
Don’t throw out the ashes from your fireplace or firepit. Ashes left over after burning natural, untreated and unpainted wood can add extra nutrients to compost piles and make compost less acidic. However, avoid composting ashes from charcoal briquettes, as they may contain additives you don’t want in your food garden.