On Jan 30, 3:15*pm, Martin wrote:
On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 06:28:23 -0800 (PST), moghouse
wrote:

On 30 Jan, 13:48, Martin wrote:

It seems tea bags contain chlorine and dioxines. So, no more used tea bags on
the garden )

Where has that Dutch good taste gone?

They never had any. BTW I'm not Dutch.

Tea bags are not fit to line
your dustbin.

UK supermarkets are stuffed with boxes of tea bags.

The Dutch haven't had dustbins for decades.

If you want a decent cup of tea buy leaf tea and mix two
thirds strong tea with one third Earl Grey and you will never use a
tea bag again!

I rarely use tea bags, I prefer coffee. The Dutch & Germans dunk tea bags in
warm water.

At a job interview in NL, I was given a drink whilst I was waiting. I asked what
the curious tasting luke warm liquid in a plastic cup was. The answer was "tea".
--

Martin

I realize you are not a native but you are surrounded by cloggies so
something must rub off. I must say the only time I visited Holland I
was forced to drink coffee, though I was much impressed by the ham and
cheese breakfasts. The British supermarkets are stuffed with a great
many foods that I would never eat!

Sheila wrote:
How do I know which paper is bleached/unbleached? I have been
putting paper in my compost heap, but just read you shouldn't put
bleached in......oh no, how do I find out!

'White' paper is either bleached or dyed. I hate to think what is in the
dye!
--
Pete C
London UK

The message
from "Pete C" contains these words:
Sheila wrote:

How do I know which paper is bleached/unbleached? I have been
putting paper in my compost heap, but just read you shouldn't put
bleached in......oh no, how do I find out!

'White' paper is either bleached or dyed. I hate to think what is in the
dye!

You can't dye something white.

Actually, it is bleached and if glossy, white clay is added, and it is
heat-treated. (Basically, ironed...)

--
Rusty
Direct reply to: horrid dot squeak snailything zetnet point co period uk
Separator in search of a sig

The message
from Martin contains these words:

I rarely use tea bags, I prefer coffee. The Dutch & Germans dunk
tea bags in
warm water.

They get that close to water?

They get closer. They export Heineken & Bavaria Pils to UK.

Ah. Making love in a punt...

--
Rusty
Direct reply to: horrid dot squeak snailything zetnet point co period uk
Separator in search of a sig

Thats exactly what I was going to say!

;-)
--
Shaun.


Hmmm, I think I'll still keep putting the paper in! and the tea bags!

~misfit~ writes

Yep. I went and bought a document shredder when they were on special last
year. We get a free local rag here twice a week, I shred it, two pages at a
time, and layer it between lawn clippings etc. on the compost heap. The
compost seems fine. shrug I don't use glossy paper or pages with
excesively large amounts of colour though. I don't use a lot of tea bags but
when I do, they go in too. :-)

I find newspapers rot down easily enough without shredding. Shredding
seems a lot of unnecessary work to me!
--
Kay

Somewhere on teh intarwebs Chris Hogg wrote:
On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:11:22 GMT, Rusty_Hinge
wrote:

The message
from "Pete C" contains these words:
Sheila wrote:

How do I know which paper is bleached/unbleached? I have been
putting paper in my compost heap, but just read you shouldn't put
bleached in......oh no, how do I find out!

'White' paper is either bleached or dyed. I hate to think what is
in the dye!

You can't dye something white.

Actually, it is bleached and if glossy, white clay is added, and it
is heat-treated. (Basically, ironed...)

Paper these days is mostly made from softwood, i.e. fast growing
conifers. They are pulped, either mechanically or chemically with
alkali (or a combination of the two) to break down the lignins and
liberate the cellulose fibres, which are usually then bleached.
Chlorine used to be used extensively, but chlorine dioxide, oxygen,
hydrogen peroxide or ozone are used now to avoid the formation of
harmful dioxins. White mineral fillers are usually added to the pulp
slurry (e.g. chalk or china clay, aka kaolin), to give opacity and
improve whiteness. The pulp slurry, at a very low solids content
(little more than cloudy white water), is then run onto a continuous
conveyor belt of wire mesh, where the water is sucked through, leaving
a fragile web of wet fibres. This is continuously lifted off and
passed over a series of heated rollers and drying stages to
consolidate and strengthen it.

If the paper is destined for the glossy magazine market, it is
subsequently coated with a high-solids slurry of either china clay or
chalk, depending on the quality of finish required, together with an
adhesive to bind it. Historically, this might be casein, made from
milk, but synthetic latex adhesives are used now. Optical brighteners
can also be added. Under UV light these fluoresce into the visible
spectrum, making the paper look whiter than it really is. Similar
chemicals are added to washing powders, which is why some white shirts
glow under the UV lighting in discos, for example. Paper coating is
often done at very high speeds, hundreds of feet per minute. To give
gloss, the dried, coated paper is passed through a series of pairs of
heated polished steel rollers forced together under pressure, a bit
like a series of old-fashioned clothes mangles. There is a very slight
speed differential between opposite rollers which causes slip and
which polishes the paper.

The paper industry used to have a very poor reputation for polluting
rivers with waste, particularly waste water containing residual
cellulose fibres and chemical residues. This had a very high
biological oxygen demand (BOD) as it decayed, resulting in dead fish
and sterile rivers. But over the last few decades they've cleaned up
their act enormously, and most pulp mills in the western world have to
conform to very strict regulations, and AIUI many recycle everything
they use with virtually no effluent at all.

The suggestion that bleached paper is somehow harmful to living
organisms in a compost heap is, at best, outdated, and probably never
had any validity in the first place.

Thats exactly what I was going to say!

;-)
--
Shaun.

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and
he`ll be warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchett, Jingo

Somewhere on teh intarwebs Sheila wrote:
Thats exactly what I was going to say!

;-)
--
Shaun.


Hmmm, I think I'll still keep putting the paper in! and the tea bags!

Yep. I went and bought a document shredder when they were on special last
year. We get a free local rag here twice a week, I shred it, two pages at a
time, and layer it between lawn clippings etc. on the compost heap. The
compost seems fine. shrug I don't use glossy paper or pages with
excesively large amounts of colour though. I don't use a lot of tea bags but
when I do, they go in too. :-)

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and
he`ll be warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchett, Jingo

To some people shredding seems like unnecessary work, but I actually enjoy it. I blogged about ways to recycle paper shred, including using it in compost. Feel free to check it out. There are so many uses for the paper shreds from the don't just limit it to compost, although by all means use it for some beautiful veggies.