This story is really boring and entirely pointless, but I swear every word is true.
I bought a new shredder the other day. I wanted to get one for my garden. Not a garden shredder, mind (I already have one of those), but a paper shredder. It will live in my office and shred paper work.
You see, I have a compost tumbler. I've become somewhat obsessed by it. I never thought I'd become one of those people who evaluate everything in their lives for its compostability, but there you are. I can't see "rubbish" anymore without thinking "I wonder if that will compost?" I now spend hours on "Compost This!" style websites. I have borrowed books about composting from my public library. It's a bit sad, really, but we all need hobbies.
I need more paper in my compost - it's too "greens" heavy and needs more "browns". A balanced compost bin needs a combination of nitrogen (from "greens" - vegetables, grass clippings, egg shells, teabags and the like), and carbon (from "browns" - dry fallen leaves, straw/hay, dry mulch... and shredded paper) in order to do the composting thing. Without a good balance of greens and browns your compost will either be too moist or too dry to break down properly.
There are a lot of different "ratio rules of thumb" out there in terms of how much of each you should have, and I'm just getting into composting, so I'm not going to hitch my wagon to any of them and swear "It must be so!", but I do like the advice that it should look nice and loamy. Observe and interact! If it looks too damp (rather than just "nicely moist"), add browns. If it looks too dry, add greens.
Well, my compost needs more browns. And I need to get rid of my paperwork. Sounds like I need a shredder!
Except I already have a shredder. It's a strip-cut shredder, which means it doesn't shred the paper into small enough pieces for the type of compost tumbler I have. I had to keep ripping up my shredding by had to make it small enough to go into my compost bin. I found this time consuming, so I wasn't doing it. Instead, I was just growing an ever increasing pile of paperwork that needed shredding. Also, I didn't think it would work for things like newspaper and paper bags, so I didn't even bother trying. Once again, I was ripping it up by hand, and therefore just generating a pile of paper I was "getting around to at some point".
So I thought it was high time I bought myself a shreddier shredder. I did what all good librarians do, and engaged in a spot of research regarding shredders. It turns out there are three types of shredder - strip-cut, cross-cut and micro-cut. Given that some of the work paper and dried leaves does in a compost bin is adding some gaps for air to circulate, it seemed to me that cross-cut was probably going to be more compost friendly than micro-cut, which might compact down too much and require more breaking up (because even though it's in a tumbler, I still find myself having to stir it up regularly - possibly because it's too damp and needs more browns).
As I was learning about "run time", "rest time" and "security level", I came across the statement that strip-cut shredders were "entry level shredders" - which seems like a bizarre idea to me. What the dickens is "entry level shredding"? Is it for people who are thinking of taking up shredding as a hobby, but aren't really sure they want to commit just yet? Would anyone who has actually read about the different security levels of shredding choose a strip-cut shredder over a micro-cut shredder for any reason at all?
And then I remembered two things: a) I bought a strip-cut shredder precisely because it was cheap and I didn't know if I was going to be all that dedicated to shredding (I saw it on special in a Big W and thought "Ooh, a shredder! May as well give it a whirl"), and b) I compost for a hobby, so who am I to judge? Also, I shred for the composting, so I guess I kind of shred for a hobby, too.
Look at me, leveling up my hobby shredding game!
