Bathroom Compost

Whitehorse is working towards becoming a ZERO WASTE municipality, which inspired me to look around my home to see how I could divert more of our waste.

Most of us are aware of the benefits of composting, and many of us make the effort to compost food scraps from our kitchen. I decided to start composting in my bathroom because paper products, like tissues or paper towels, are a welcome addition to any compost pile.

Paper products (carbon source) alternated between layers of greens (nitrogen source) actually help in the composting process. If you have your own backyard composting, this process might have a bit more effort to it, as you should worry about the amount of the carbon vs nitrogen that you are layering. Read more about it.

However, Whitehorse composting facilities are really well established and on an industrial scale. This is the case for a lot of towns. For that reason, I focus on making the behaviour change towards more composting easier in my household.

Good bathroom composting starts with purchasing decisions.

It helps to purchase 100 per cent post-consumer waste-paper products that are processed chlorine-free. I go with seventh generation, but there are lots of products available.

If you build it, they will come.

All you need is a paper bag! That's it.

The advantage of a paper bag is that you can compost it as well. However, I do tend to re-use one bag for quite a few months because it doesn't need to be changed that often.

Place the paper bag beside your bathroom garbage and label it if you feel that is necessary. Tissues, hair, nail clippings, etc. can all be thrown into the compost rather than the garbage!

There is no additional work in bathroom composting for me. My compost and waste containers are side by side outside my door. When I clean the bathroom it is the same amount of effort to take out the garbage as to take out the compost (again, this may not be the case if you have a backyard compost).

My roommates adjusted to the change without comment, and I never notice anyone throwing something away that should be composted.

To be honest, I didn't think that we threw out that many paper products from the bathroom. When a summer cold blew through my house, I realized that there can be real potential for waste diversion in home bathrooms.

This method has been a success for a couple of reasons:

• We have at least halved our bathroom waste!
• We have increased our household awareness for composting, which has a trickle down effect into other areas of our lives.