telephone books

The other day I read in a gardening mag I think, not to use telephone books in your compost pile. Well, I have been shredding the pages of lots of old phone books my MIL gave me. Why would it not be okay? I don't use any color/slick pages, just the white/offwhite pages with the black ink names/numbers.

There's the possibility the inks used are petroleum based and not biodegradable.

How would that end up looking in the soil, or compost?

Gardenza, when my health aide tossed a torn-up phone book into my compost bin, I didn't know it was there until 2 weeks later. I was turning the compost over and found a few barely identifiable wads of yellow paper. After using a stick to un-wad the chunks, I tossed in some alfalfa pellets to speed up the cooking, & left it alone for another month.

All I did from that point on was aerate and moisten as needed. The phone book was gone by week six. The worms and microorganisms loved it.

This message was edited May 17, 2009 8:57 PM

Thanks, PuddlePirate, for the good news, and the reminder about the alfalfa pellets. Mine are usually 'recycled' by the time they reach the compost pile, but I might try adding some fresh to see how that goes.
So, do the worms stay down at the bottom, away from the 'cooking', or do they move up and down with the temperature?

They move to wherever the conditions suit them.

they go where the treats are...

Thanks for the input. Too late now if it's not good.