Using cardboard in my compost pile

[Susan BBPM]

Ever since I read @Colin's thread the other day about wood chips, I have been spending a lot of time trying to find a cost efficient, labor-saving way to shed down the voluminous amount of corrugated cardboard our home business creates.

So far I have read about ripping it, soaking it, layering it, cutting it with a table saw or band saw, using a lawn mower to chop it up, saw YouTube vids of weird looking homemade shredders that look like they might take your fingers off, more vids of home owners tenuously shredding it with their yard chippers, using a heavy duty office paper shredders just to have them burn out, and commercial or industrial cardboard shredders that would almost require a 2nd mortgage. None of these really seem practical.

Do any of you use corrugated cardboard in your compost pile the HAS been shredded down into small pieces, and how do you shred it? Or, any ideas I haven't mentioned above? Remember, I am talking a decent volume of cardboard. Thanks.

Soak it first in a big bin, then use some kind of blade/cutting device attached to an electric drill. It's a method commonly used for making paper bricks for burning.

 

[Susan BBPM]

...although I'd have thought big sheets of single thickness between other layers would break down very quickly so do you need to shred it? Just make sure it's wet.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Paper products, especially re-cycled ones, tend to have plastic in them nowadays. Personally I don't want that in my soil.