Things you can compost: jeans edition

The picture below was taken last autumn and shows a couple of containers of mizuna. (Actually, it’s not just mizuna in those containers, but that’s for another post.) The bluish-grey mess on the right is something that started life as a pair of jeans. They spent some months in our Dalek compost bin and this is the result – all the cotton has rotted down, leaving strands of polyester and Lycra behind. It’s quite annoying having to fish out strands of synthetic fibre from our compost so I’ve now created a separate pile outside the compost bin, which is reserved for mixed fibre items like jeans, T-shirts, sheets etc. that are too nasty/stained/ripped to be given to a charity shop. Once the worms have had their fill, the synthetic residue is put out for the bin men!