The model is a Fellowes 62 MC which was just over £100, but there are other models out there that will be as good.
Thanks Ferdinand, it’s useful to know if I start producing enough to warrant something more efficient than hands, scissors and shears. I hope to make a thrifty three-part wooden composter soon and am upcycling more as my DIY skills improve, so it feels counterintuitive to blow £100 on a shredder. But the day may come.
@Fairygirl you humble me with your common sense! My rolls sit crisp and dry n the kitchen, ready to make work for me. I must be the king of inefficiency. Out they go...
@Fairygirl you humble me with your common sense! My rolls sit crisp and dry n the kitchen, ready to make work for me. I must be the king of inefficiency. Out they go...
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Yes, any fresh growth counts as green. Dried out stuff counts are brown.
I don't think it's that simple.
I've always understood that in compost terms, "green" means rich in nitrogen, eg grass clippings, kitchen waste and leafy prunings, and "brown" means rich in carbon: woody prunings or anything that used to be wood, such as cardboard. And that the composting process works best when these two elements are present in roughly equal amounts, and well mixed.
The difference between "fresh" and "dried out" is a matter of water content. It's an important difference, because composting doesn't work as well if the material is too wet or too dry. (The drying process does involve some other biochemical changes: otherwise you could turn hay back into green grass just by adding water.) But drying green plant matter is never going to convert the nitrogen content into carbon.
Maybe we should move away from describing compostable materials as "green" and "brown", since it has little to do with their colour, and is easily misunderstood. "Nitrogen-rich" and "carbon-rich" don't trip off the tongue so easily, but they do say what they mean.
I put my loo roll middles in the food waste bin which lives beside the kitchen sink and is emptied every day or two. They are usually soggy by the time they reach Compost Corner behind the garage.
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Thanks Ferdinand, it’s useful to know if I start producing enough to warrant something more efficient than hands, scissors and shears. I hope to make a thrifty three-part wooden composter soon and am upcycling more as my DIY skills improve, so it feels counterintuitive to blow £100 on a shredder. But the day may come.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I don't think it's that simple.
I've always understood that in compost terms, "green" means rich in nitrogen, eg grass clippings, kitchen waste and leafy prunings, and "brown" means rich in carbon: woody prunings or anything that used to be wood, such as cardboard. And that the composting process works best when these two elements are present in roughly equal amounts, and well mixed.
The difference between "fresh" and "dried out" is a matter of water content. It's an important difference, because composting doesn't work as well if the material is too wet or too dry. (The drying process does involve some other biochemical changes: otherwise you could turn hay back into green grass just by adding water.) But drying green plant matter is never going to convert the nitrogen content into carbon.
Maybe we should move away from describing compostable materials as "green" and "brown", since it has little to do with their colour, and is easily misunderstood. "Nitrogen-rich" and "carbon-rich" don't trip off the tongue so easily, but they do say what they mean.