The answers kinda depend on the balance of the greens and browns you add, which you'll likely have to determine by experimentation.

I find UCG as a nitrogen source compost all my household paper and cardboard really well. Much of the time I add the UCG directly to the garden soil, then pick out the paper filters by hand, and layer them over a thin layer of household paper or tree leaves. It always breaks down beautifully.

"IALBTC." -- Prof. Dirt

All the best,
-Patrick

IALBTC:

It All Leads Back To Compost.

I toss everything in:

If I have time & I'm in the mood to rip & tear, I rip & tear, & it breaks down faster.

You can take the Mother Nature approach:
Mother Nature throws in whatever materials she has, & IALBTC, sometimes faster & sometimes not as fast.

If "not as fast" isn't fast enough, you can always add more greens.

Ive done it all ways. If I have time, I tear/shred it to pieces. I think I broke my shredder, tho, it only works in reverse mode. hee

I put a large TIDE box last summer and all that was left is the plastic handle.

:)

Throw it all in. Consider tossing in your kitchen scraps. Bury them well. Some natural liquid fertilizer would be a good source of moisture and nitrogen and may make your pile heat up. Leaves are great for the compost pile if you can get some. Bill Hill

Garbage in-Compost out.
The End.

Just celulose, paper, which has no nutrients in the product at all and coffee grounds would eventually become a compost like material but most likely with little to no nutrients in the mix. If you put a nutrient barren product into your compost pile you will get a nutient less end product, add some other organic material that has nutrients, such as leaves or kitchen waste, to get some nutrients in that mix.

I compost all my paper plates, paper towels, used kleenex, junk mail, magazines, phone books, corrugated boxes, cereal boxes, labels from cans ... even traffic tickets and old unpaid bills...(grin)

Paper added to the compost pile will help to increase the amount of carbon needed to off-set the nitrogen in your pile. The ideal 30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen is sometimes difficult to achieve during the composting season. When I run out of leaves, I use the paper I stockpile all winter.

Paper will also help control moisture in a pile that is too wet and has started to smell.

Most of my paper is shredded and I find it composts rapidly.

Locally I can only recycle about 1/3 of the paper I accumulate, so composting is a "greener use" of the material.

I also put coffee filters and teabags into my compost pile. I use newspapers under mulch around newly planted trees and shrubs to keep weeds down, and after 1 season they are usually broken down.

I put pretty much everything paper in my pile too. Especially with the amount of junk mail you get now days! The paperboard (Cereal boxes, etc) I'm not even bothering to tear up. I thought it would be easier to just put them down flat to help with weed control ;)

Laura

What about INK and chemicals on the paper products. I just yelled into the living room to tell my wife about composting paper and the first thing she said is, what about the ink?

L

The inks today are generally considered to be perfectly safe to add to piles. They are devoid of the heavy metals that used to be a concern for some packaging. I add huge amounts of paper and paper products to the pile. Note that these materials are almost pure carbon, but that they can, in fact, contribute to garden fertility. The reason is that the carbon acts as a base for bacteria which develop which fix atmospheric nitrogen. So, for a very carbon rich feedstock, you can end up with more nitrogen than you input in feedstock. For fastest decomposition, however, a bit of nitrogen material will really help.
Renais

You covered my points exactly, renais. Composting stabilizes carbon and minor but important amounts of soluble and less soluble nutrients.

I once visited a paper-products plant in Oxnard, CA. The company was successfully composting vast heaps of wet waste colored pulp.

Composting is great! I like to visit this forum just to get close to the great cycle of life.
I add paper towels to my pile also. With the paper towels, coffee refuse and other scraps, the composting process begins in my kitchen.
I have about 15 bags of leaves from the Fall, so I should be able to produce quite a bit of compost this Spring and Summer.

Pete

Great, thanks much! My shredder is going to get a workout now, and I just put a brown paper grocery sack by the trash can in the kitchen, which is holding torn-up packaging paperboard. Woo hoo!

L

I know this is an old thread but my wife was just yelling at me for paper plates because she thought the wax (if that's even still what they're using) on them would be bad for the pile. But I love that IALBTC. The system works when we let it.

question can you put new paper that is shredded around garden plants as well ???

You could but that shredded paper would tend to get blown around more easily than would sheets unless covered with something heavier to hole it in place.

kimmq is kimmsr

Funny that people would worry about the wax on paper plates. If it's FOOD GRADE and you can EAT off of it, it is perfectly safe for the compost pile.

Wash them well first to remove any residual sandwich or pizza crust or, in the case of paper bowls, a clinging corn flake or Cheerio.

annpatt is of course kidding, any of that stuff can go right into the compost. Just don't tell her about how gooshy it gets, especially anything bread-like, when it gets all soggy and disgusting. We don't talk about that.