Do you know how toxic toilet bowl cleaner is? That is sure to be in this stuff. "solid waste from sewage" This post is just a commercial. I am not "buying" it. I don't want toxic waste in my garden. Some people eat stuff that they grow.

Oh please. Los Angeles municipal compost is pretty well tested and managed. i have been using it for years without any problems. As far as toilet bowl cleaner is concerned, the only thing you have to worry about is bleach wich breaks down into salt pretty quickly. Not much to worry about there if tou understand the chemistry involved. The amount of biosolids in the compost is pretty low so salt content can be managed.

On a separate note, what is up with people always crying, "shill" or "it's just a commercial," whenever someone promotes something with which they disagree? It is just ridiculous. They are giving the compost away for free for goodness sake. If you have to resort to ad hominems you really have nothing to say.

Agreed, this compost has very little in common with anything that went down the drains. I myself would probably limit the use to lawns and perennial beds, but even that is based on an abundance of caution and not science, I admit. It looks like great compost to me. If it's stinky I'd aerate it and compost it a bit more. :-]

For the record, the city didn't pay or reward me for the post. But I will receive 50% of the $0 profit they make by giving the stuff away.

As far as safety: The website makes very clear the compost is safe. If they're wrong, the city would be liable for a lot of illness. It'd be easy to prove the city was guilty because there'd be bad bacteria in the compost. I don't believe the city would accept any risk of liability, in order to get a reward of $0 for giving the stuff away.

Lucky Ben ! Nice weather throughout the year, nice place with a beautiful coast, great compost for free, composting and vermicomposting from January to December with no frost to fear... You're a lucky man, isn't your life good !

Thank god you're don't get paid for being that happy ! You should pay a luck tax to be redistributed to those whose compost piles are frozen throughout for months ;-)

Ben I would hold out for 75

I have read the published tests of several city composts and have been quite impressed by both the thoroughness of the testing, and the benign nature of the materials tested. For instance, I was worried about trace quantities of heavy metals in the product; tests showed these at or below detectable, and often better than native soils. I always assumed that any dangerous pathogens had been destroyed by the processing, but it was heartening to see both the range of tests conducted, and the negative results confirming that the materials were safe. If you have access to these kind of materials, I'd suggest at least looking at the info on them; they can be a real gift to gardeners. In our area, demand is often quite low for such materials, so there is generally no cost for the material, and usually something like a $5 charge to fill up a pick up with it. Well worth the cost to load about 3500 pounds of material in my case.
Renais

We do have to pay for our compost (something like $12 per yard) at our landfill, but it is certified organic (how they do that, I'm not sure!)
But here in VERY ORGANIC Sonoma Co. CA, they wouldn't be able to get away with anything non-organic!
Nancy

Hayward,69f today. Not bad. Sunny,and coming off rains. Happy plants engorged in water.Banana's have all they want. Ferns in shade perky as can be.

City sludge compost is probably better then the city compost sold at HD. That stuff might be poisonous. Way too heavy...needs more time at the very least.

I want to know how they propose to remove toilet bowl cleaner from the compost. It can not be safe, because there no amount of heat sterilization that will do that. They are only testing it for diseases when it says safe. What does safe mean? Safe in terms of something I want in living near me? If you dig in your garden, you will be contact with that even if you don't eat stuff from your garden. I am here to promote making and not buying compost. If I was buying I would buy it a bag from a nursery. Something like Master Blend Compost, a named product.

I know that none of the cleaners we use in our home pose any issues to our self-contained waste system, but I was curious, and looked up other cleaners. Some years ago when I surveyed a grocery, looking at all the kitchen and bathroom cleaners, as well as laundry materials they sold, I found none that would pose any issue except a few that used borax. All the others were readily degradable, and did not have harmful degradation products. A look at the ingredients list for Clorox toilet bowl cleaner, and several others confirmed that there are not harmful degradation products. Heat sterilization is used for the pathogens; the cleaners and other products chemically degrade in the composting environment. At most, there might be some sodium, but not much, and it will be well diluted. If there is a particular compost you are concerned about, read the test results. These are generally quite well tested, and are a good bargain.
Renais

Again, toilet bowl cleaner breaks down to table salt. The main ingredient is bleach which is sodium hypochlorite and sodium hydroxide. These are very simple compounds and what is left over after throwing off oxygen to react with all the organic matter in the sewage pipes is sodium and chlorine which bond to form sodium chloride or table salt. Sodium chloride is extremely soluble and there is a lot more water in the system than bleach, so it is of little concern. In fact it is likely making the biosolids safer by reacting with disease causing organisms on the way to treatment.

Disease isn't all they are looking at with regards to safety. They also test for heavy metals.

This post was edited by nil13 on Thu, Nov 27, 14 at 12:26

People who quiver at the mention of biosolids generally have no idea of the processes involved at arriving at a finished product. It is as safe as any home produced compost and carries fewer pathogenic or heavy metal issues than does processed manures. They even produce potable water from sewage treatment plants!! These facilities undergo very complex testing before releasing the material for home use, as do all commercial composting facilties.

By definition, ALL compost is organic. To be certified organic, compost just needs to be subjected to testing to determine any presence of residual pesticides. This is done with pretty much any commercial composting operation as a matter of course, as is testing for acceptable levels of heavy metals.

And a little borax would be a boon for most soils since they are low in B.

IIRC, the federal Biosolids Rule governs the reuse of sludge in composting operations, and it does list limits for heavy metals. Metals have been considered the top priority thus far, since they do not degrade at all and presumably could build up in soil if compost with high levels of metals were applied over and over.

I really don't understand the obsession with toilet bowl cleaner. Most of them are either a strong acid or base, plus surfactants, and sometimes, bleach. Acids and bases are neutralized in the treatment process yielding harmless salts, bleach reacts instantly with organic matter (probably never reaches the plant), and surfactants generally degrade in treatment (although a percentage of some survive). Note, surfactants are also in laundry detergent, dish soap, spray cleaners, toothpaste and shampoo. For safety, I recommend not eating them. :-)

The one thing that science (perhaps) hasn't worked out yet is the meaning of the trace (yet non-zero) levels of surfactants, pesticides, and other chemicals that go down the drain, some of which find their way into sludge undegraded. I'm not making a case that this is somehow dangerous, because as far as we know it is not. Yet, as an environmental chemist who has seen the field evolve over the past few decades, I am not arrogant enough to think we know everything yet. :-] I think we should all use fewer chemicals in general (including cleaners), which would reduce the risk (if there is any) at the source.

We (the environmental science community) suspect there *is* a risk to aquatic life from surfactants in treated sewage effluent that goes back in the waterways, so I am more worried about that than what's in the sludge. To a certain extent our use of thousands of chemicals daily is a grand experiment.

nancyjane, I can get great leaf compost for $10 yd. Only problem is that it contains 10% small rocks. A couple dressings may be fine, but not on and on. The manager had thought that it was from laying stone down to drive around on, but I find it is consistent year after year.. Where oh where are the rocks coming from? To get them out to a small pea gravel size takes a lot of hard hand screening because of the lumpy, clumpy nature of the high piled stuff.

I have the same problem with free city yard waste mulch, they use gravel on the yard and the front loader sometimes scrapes some up. Sounds like the operator at your place doesn't really get that. If they just left a few inches of mulch/compost to drive on top of and didn't try to get every bit...but they are not on the receiving end of the product so they don't pay attention to that.

They screen it but not real finely. I suspect that because of the small and even tiny rock sizes that it is coming from homeowners and municipal suction...still, what sloppiness from whoall.

You do realize all upstream cities dump their processed waste water right back into the river. I.e. Vegas dumps their treated water right back into Lake Mead, which feeds our drinking water reservoirs in So. Cal.

Kinda off topic but looking at CNN about the rain in California....WOW! You guys don't do anything in moderation. That is some impressive weather. Good luck to all in the area affected.

Lloyd