2 birds with one stone

[cpaharley2008]

Recently I have gotten into recycling in a big manner. I have a garden compost for my grass/leaves/kitchen waste. I recycle paper and plastic and glass. Subsequently I no longer purchase top soil for my garden and my trash has reduced to one can per week.
Then I started thinking, my paper is my largest commodity and takes up the most room. In addition it seemed wasteful. When I go camping I'm always purchasing firewood because "bring in wood" is prohibited.
I found this contraption which looks promising
http://www.kotulas.com/deals/4in1-paper-log-maker

[cpaharley2008]

So now I shred my paper and reduce my waste. I then make take the shredded waste and soak it for 24 hours in water and place the wet waste into my "brick" maker. The next day my bricks are drying and within 48 hours ready to burn. Now I have a unlimited source of campfire logs to burn while camping. Someday our grandchildren will thank us for our recycling efforts.

[Jeff Russell]

[Mike Magee]

Radical! How long does it take you to accumulate enough paper to make 1 log? Finally, a use for the newspapers, old phone books, etc.

[kootenaigirl]

What a neat idea for camping.

[Frederick L. Simson]

Originally Posted by cpaharley2008

2 birds with one stone

or, ... <ahem> ... Brick

[Alf S.]

Originally Posted by Frederick L. Simson

or, ... <ahem> ... Brick

Hi: Frederick L Simson...(Ahem) People who live in glass houses shouldn't stow thrones!!!
Alf S. North shore of Lake Erie

[james kent]

Now can you add in a bit of nice cedar smell?

[cpaharley2008]

I'm going to use this as soon as I get my shredder next week and start getting rid of 5 years of paperwork, I'll report back my results.

[honda03842]

We have not bought newspapers since we took up RVing. We do read newspapers, probably 3-5 a day but only on the Internet.

One thing I've learned since RVing is North America has trees in abundnce.

Like many communities, recycling is mandatory here. Each home has one trash barrel and one recycling barrel.

As to soil, our town has soil banks. Leaves and green 'stuff' is piled by year until it returns to rich soil. Typiclly there are 5 different piles, each progressively closer to rich soil. Any one can come to our transfer station and take soil.

[GerthT]

Looks really cool! Have you burned any of these bricks yet? How long do they burn? How hot? Are they more like fire 'starters'....or do they actually replace the need for firewood?

[Alf S.]

Originally Posted by cpaharley2008

I'm going to use this as soon as I get my shredder next week and start getting rid of 5 years of paperwork, I'll report back my results.

Hi: cpaharley2008... According to our gubermint you're only allowed to shred docs after making copies in triplicate More fire bricks down the road. I add the shredded bits to my composter. No identity theft there but no fire either!!!
Alf S North shore of Lake Erie

[Jim Bennett]

Originally Posted by james kent

Now can you add in a bit of nice cedar smell?

Using the paper from training the pup might prove interesting.

[Carol H]

Originally Posted by honda03842

Like many communities, recycling is mandatory here. Each home has one trash barrel and one recycling barrel.

LOL Norm, we have 5 separate containers we have to put out:

One for paper and cardboard - not limited in size
One for none refundable glass, tins and plastics - not limited in size
One for organic garden waste - limited in number and size - 5 I think.
One for general garbage limited to two 20 gallon cans.
One for compostable kitchen waste

The organic compostable kitchen one is currently optional in my District but where my family lives on Vancouver island its not optional and they only have garbage pick up every two weeks and are only allowed one container of general garbage no more than 20 gallon/77 liter in size.

I am always a little surprised when traveling in some southern states that I wasn't able to find any recycling being done at a number of parks both public and private in various states. Ended up carrying the recycling around with me for a number of days until I found someplace to dispose of it or was in a new state. Couldn't bring myself to just put it in one big garbage bin due to having been well trained to recycle due to the recycling regs at home.

[Jim Bennett]

I noticed that too Carol, in our recent trip into the US. I was quite surprised to see that nothing, not even cans and bottles, had a bin for recycling. The odd one had drink containers, but that was it.

Here we have 3 Municipal bins. One for garbage, collected every two weeks. One for recyclables(everything goes in one bin), and one for compostable waste (all food scraps, tissues, yard waste, sawdust, etc), collected weekly. Plus, we have compost bins in our back yard as well.

[cpaharley2008]

the US is far behind the rest of the world in recycling efforts, I know that. Hardly any cg have facilities set up and it pains me to put so much in trash, I sometimes bring stuff back home to recycle.

[Carol H]

Originally Posted by Jim Bennett

Plus, we have compost bins in our back yard as well.

Yes most people here do as well but many of us who live in urban areas frequented by bears have found putting kitchen scraps into it can create problems so using the kitchen compost curbside pick up is a better option leaving the back yard composts mostly for garden waste. The garden waste that the District picks up at curb side is mostly (or at least at my home it is) tree & shrub limbs cut into short pieces for pick up as they need to be chipped before they can be composted. Which is what they they do with it at the Districts main recycling facility. They then sell back the garden soil they make through chipping & composting it all in the big bins at the recycling facility.

[Steve Hammel]

"Now can you add in a bit of nice cedar smell?"

Buy some shredded cedar garden chips and add then to the log.

[cpaharley2008]

Originally Posted by Steve Hammel

"Now can you add in a bit of nice cedar smell?"

Buy some shredded cedar garden chips and add then to the log.

good idea... thanks

[theresa p]

jim---this log idea is certainly very interesting. we just returned from maine, where, by the way, the state park we were in (camden hills) had an excellent recycling set-up at their site. we went looking in stores (home depot, walmart, shaws) for fireplace logs of compressed sawdust, so we could cut down the amount of firewood we burned. but the high cost of them really threw us! a box of 6 3-hr logs was over $24!!! so, we burned wood instead of the combo log/wood we were planning. having some of these logs made at home would have been a real cost-saver, as well as a great way to recycle paper.
thanks for showing us that link!