Burn or shred?
A surprisingly good question is
Is it better for the environment for me to burn my garden waste, give it to the council to compost or shred it myself and put it on paths. If I do the first thing I get useful ash, no transport is required but I do create smoke and CO2. The second requires the use of council vehicles, generates CO2 while rotting down and can spread plant diseases but is useful to reduce water consumption by gardeners. The final one requires energy to run the shredder and then the material will rot down and give off CO2 anyway but again reduces water consumption. Please help!
February 13th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
CO2 is a fact of life. Different decomposition methods will not reduce the amount of CO2 released eventually - just time scale of the release. The CO2 was once in the atmosphere, and if you plant things again it will be taken in again. Just bloody get over this CO2 fixation that the world has - it does not apply if you let it decompose in your garden or burn it.