It can be recycled into renewed cardboard to be used again and again. The best place for wet cardboard is in the compost bin.Ĭardboard is a sustainable material. Dry cardboard will be your friend, wet cardboard will become a soggy mess. The same would apply if you tried to mend a hole in a leaking roof. It may work for a short while if it’s been thoroughly coated with an effective waterproofing substance.

The protective layer will break down over time and allow moisture to soften the cardboard within.Ĭardboard would be no use as a boat-building material. This is just a surface treatment that usually involves wax or plastic, forming a membrane barrier. Just make it damp.Ĭardboard juice cartons are often coated in a variety of materials that seal the surface. It will lose all resemblances of ever having had any strength about it. It will then extend beyond soft and become a slimy mess. But the moment it becomes wet, it will lose all of its strength.Ĭardboard will break down in water. Assembled in the right way, it can support a significant amount of weight. The thing about cardboard is that, when it’s dry, it can be very strong. Damp, or wet, cardboard that’s been placed in compost or on soil, will be subjected to microorganisms that will, eventually, rot it down completely.

The strength in cardboard relies on it being completely dry. You will see cardboard break down when it becomes damp. Having been formed, originally, from a ground-down log, then pressed into flat panels, we have a ready-made ingredient that does everything that a perfect ‘carbon-brown’ material needs to do.Ĭardboard will break down in water. Among all the ‘ carbon-browns’ that we add to the compost, cardboard is probably the most convenient. These are transient components of the natural carbon-cycle. Even if it’s covered with so much print that it’s barely recognisable as cardboard, there will be a fibrous, cardboard element which will break down and disappear into any evolving mass of compost.Ĭardboard is just like wood. Not all cardboard is recyclable into ‘new’ cardboard but all cardboard is biodegradable. So, here we ask: is all cardboard biodegradable? Recycling into ‘new’ cardboard should probably be the first choice of disposal to make the best use of it from a wider community perspective.īut what if you have cardboard that isn’t fit, for whatever reason, to be sent for recycling into ‘new’? Making compost from it may be the only choice left. This is done so skilfully, that you don’t realise that the cardboard box that you’re holding, may have been other cardboard boxes in previous lives. Most cardboard is recyclable, it can be turned into ‘new’ cardboard. If you are minded to view all materials that you handle with a recycling mindset, then the variety, in appearance, of all the cardboard out there, may leave you wondering what you can do with it.

We can sometimes be left wondering if it’s cardboard or plastic. Modern graphics and printing technology often dresses up cardboard to like something special. Most items that we buy, these days will either be in a cardboard box or there will be an element of cardboard packaging in there somewhere. When cardboard is moistened, microorganisms will begin the process of biodegradation.

Cardboard is made from wood fibres that have been pressed together into sheets. Is it safe to use cardboard in a vegetable garden?Īll cardboard is biodegradable. Also: Does cardboard break down in water?

Does cardboard decompose