Jumpers and Pants... Does Composting Get Any Stranger?

[HotBin]

Garden and food waste are the good obvious things to be adding to the HOTBIN, but are you experimenting with different items in yours?

We’ve heard of woolly jumpers (probably Christmas ones) going in and even underpants! Yes, really!

What strange things are you up to?

[Chollerton]

These things will compost if they are 100% wool or cotton but nylon mixes are not likely to break down - even the so-called compost bags from supermarkets take a very long time to break down.

[Maple-P.I.]

Shredding the bags can help to increase speed of breakdown and stop the prevention of airflow through the bin. However understand it's not ideal if they are a bit icky!

[Stew]

Our cat Billy supplies me with his presents of mice,rabbits and a few stoats and they've all gone in with no problems. I must stress the bin is always running between 50 and 60 because of all the grass clippings I use and wouldn't want to risk it if it were cooler. I was amazed that in the end product I found no evidence of anything I put in it, cigarette ends,bones the only trace was a few pockets of shredded paper that hadn't mixed properly, magic.

[Spadelessade]

I haven't tried putting bones in yet - do they really rot down? I guess only when the temperature is up but even then don't feel confident that it would work? I've just put some old cotton socks (cut into small pieces) and an old cotton pillow case, also cut up small. My end result compost always seems to be quite wet, so I'm hoping things like old clothing etc might help a bit to absorb the excess moisture. I do put as much cardboard, shredded paper and wood chips as I can.

[Penellype]

I've put bones from whole chicken carcasses in after boiling them down for stock. The small bones disappear but the bigger ones from the legs do not. They come out "clean" and "dry" and I chuck them back in as part of the bulking agent. I don't eat red meat on the bone, but I suspect that bones from things such as chops would be similar.

[donaldtaylor]

Yes, after boiling bird's bones are really great for composting. This is something like bone dust

[boggy]

For a long time I have added my urine to the compost container, however this has led to a gloopy mess and the compost has cooled drastically. Urine is too valuable to flush down the WC so I now add it to the 'bog standard' bin and after cleaning the Hotbin and adding more wood chippings the heat is back.