Compost Marketing: Feb. 1997, Paper + Poultry = Compost Pellets

James Edwards of the USDA-ARS National Soil Dynamics Laboratory, Auburn, Ala., has signed a cooperative research and development agreement with a recycling firm, Tascon Inc., Houston, Texas, to make the pellets and other products for farm and garden use. Tascon President Jim Adamoli said he is already selling recycled paper mulch for use in flower gardens in both shredded form and as pellets.

The product can be applied by hand on a flowerbed like pine bark mulch or incorporated into the soil with a fertilizer dispenser. For use as a fertilizer, Tascon fortifies the final product with poultry manure, heats the mixture to 160 degrees Fahrenheit to kill possible pathogens, and then extrudes it as pellets.

Adamoli has his eyes on setting up manufacturing plants in rural areas around the country to make the product as accessible as possible. Alabama is one state he is considering because its abundance of poultry and horticultural industries provide natural markets for the recycled paper as bedding and mulch.

For the past four years, Edwards has tested shredded newspaper and telephone books on corn, soybeans, cotton, tomatoes, collards and other vegetables to test their effect on the soil and the crops. When mixed in compacted soil, he found the paper loosens the compacted soil and improves yields of corn, soybeans and cotton. He has worked with farmers in Texas, using large size pellets as a surface mulch to keep vulnerable bare soil from blowing away.

Adamoli makes the pellets in various sizes. But to fit home fertilizer dispensers, he makes them the size of a fertilizer pellet: 3/16-inch diameter by 1 inch long. He also plans to break up the pellets for use as livestock bedding. He and Edwards are testing the bedding in five poultry houses in Alabama.

The paper pellets form a soft bedding that is easier on a chick’s tender breast and feet than aged sawdust or other bedding material. Farmers report they like the bedding better and that it does a better job of absorbing urine and ammonia fumes.

"These pellets fluff up when they get wet and absorb 4 to 5 times their weight in water," Edwards said.

Tascon could contract with poultry houses to sell them fresh bedding and buy it back, used, with manure applied by the chickens. Tascon is looking at making the paper manure pellets into a potting mix and "peat pots" for transplants. Edwards and Tascon personnel are testing potting mix on landscape plants, inclu-ding greenhouse snapdragons, impatiens, pansies and field ornamentals.

The manure, a nitrogen source, would help the paper waste decompose and turn into compost. Lawn clippings and other yard and food wastes are potential nitrogen sources for decomposition, said Edwards.

However it is applied, the paper-manure mix improves soil quality at least as much as manure alone, with less of an accompanying risk of nitrate/nitrogen leaching from the manure to groundwater.

And Edwards’ experiments are convincing him increasingly that something in waste paper possesses herbicidal qualities, possibly controlling weeds such as crabgrass better than commerical herbicides. If this is true, then it would make the paper peat pots especially appealing to the horticultural industry.

If the herbicide could be incorporated into the pot itself, the industry would save the waste and hazard involved in trying to spray potted plants without hitting the spaces between the pots.

Edwards is also finding that the mixture shifts the balance of soil microbes toward types that increase plant health and yield and suppress disease-causing organisms.