magazines in compost

[susiewoosie]

I know I can compost cardboard and paper but can I also compost my old magazines?

[rana]

At a compost making talk run by some eco-warriors I was told that glossy magazines rot down with no problem. I doubt whether the presenters had actually done it themselves because I've found that the mags are very resilient and don't rot at all well. Now they are consigned to the re-cycle bin.

[chrispy]

I could be wrong about this, but, i'm sure that "glossy" paper contain quite a few chemicals to obtain said gloss......personally i compost paper, card etc, and recycle mags either in the re-cycle bin, or the doctors surgery.....apart from the gardening mags which are now getting abit out of control.......think i might have enough to build another shed!!

[snohare]

I'm sure that glossy paper will compost down, if your bin is hot enough. The clue here is that it needs heat (ie a physical process) to break down - why won't biological processes do it ? The process of calendaring - putting the shine on paper - uses lots of nasty chemicals, because the standard cheapo (relatively)ecofriendly soya inks generally used nowadays can't be used, and so what is used is full of stuff like cadmium, zinc, formaldehyde, salts, solvents...I would never use anything glossy. If you feed that sort of stuff to your slugs, don't be surprised to find your pest-control toads poisoned and your slugs mutating into creatures from the Black Lagoon...

[Florence Fennel]

Thanks Snohare, my scissors then wouldn't be the ultimate deterrent on the slugs. I'm sure though that some of last year's slugs had mutated from some sea monster. I don't put glossy paper in my compost for the reasons you so eloquently describe.

[susiewoosie]

Okay magazines in the recyle bin. Thanks everyone