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We all get junk mail, right? I mean, there seems to be a metric ton of it in my mailbox every day, and all I can think of is how many trees died so that I would have something to put in the trashcan. Personally, I hate it.
I did buy a shredder to make mulch, but read that you should not shred colored paper into the garden as the chemicals have a tendency to be bad for it. But there is soooooo much mail.
Here, then, is a recipie to make logs from your mail. Best of all, you can use hay bale twine, thus solving another issue that I was reading about. Basically, I needed to do something for the winter, and I rejoiced when I found this. I've made several of these logs and they really work wonders.
1) Collect your junk mail and lay it all flat. You will not want to put any of the envelopes with plastic windows or credit card blanks in your mail to be burned, but the rest should be fine. I like to lay down some of the flyers from the grocery stores/department stores, and then put things like letters and envelopes on top. The idea is that the biggest pieces are on the bottom and will be used to hold the rest in place.
2) Mist your mail with water as you are laying it down. You don't want to soak the paper, but you will want to get it a tad damp. The moisture will ease out some of the creases in the paper and will make the creation of the 'log' easier.
3) Roll the mail into a 'log' and tie with twine. You will want to roll as tightly as you can, before tying it off. The tighter the log, the longer it will burn.
4) Allow the log to completely dry out. This part usually takes a few days. You don't want to use any wet logs so the longer it dries, the better.
You can now burn the log of mail, just like the fire logs you get in the store. Each of these logs that you create will burn for anywhere from 20 - 45 minutes, depending on how thick you make them. They will retain their shape as they burn, since you moistened them to hold the paper to the curl. Additionally, because they are paper, they will start easily, and can be used in the fireplace as a base to put real wood on top of.
The nice thing is that you can use the ashes to add to your soil afterwards. So finally, all that junk mail is useful for something.
Welll... rats. I know though that you can get inexpensive jute from most feed and seed stores, though, so the twine/string shouldn't be a major issue. Too bad about the plastic hay twine though.
If you burn the junk mail, particularly the brightly colored and shiny stuff, it would seem to me that you would be in danger of inhaling fumes from the metals and other toxic substances used in some of the inks - the same things that are bad for the garden. In addition, if you burn the junk mail and put the ashes into the garden or compost it would seem to me that those ashes might still contain some of the very materials you were trying to keep out of the garden by not mulching with the junk mail in the 1st place.
Maybe I've misunderstood something here, but I just wanted to raise my concerns and add a word of caution just in case.
As for using and/or getting rid of the junk mail, I often shred and compost letters and such that are just black ink on white or near white paper. I put all of the rest of my junk mail, catalogs, magazines and such out for recycling as these things are picked up in my city.
Unfortunately, in my neighborhood, the recycling program is spotty at best. Hence being all creative.
I do understand your concerns, and they are good ones. I think that having a wide open flue should take care of any issues with the fumes that you mention, so that part should be OK. I also believe that the ick will be burned off, so that the ashes should be fine. However, you have brought a point, and I think I'll put the ashes in a specific part of the garden out back and see how it works. Heck, why not be an experimenter, as much as anything else? *grin*
