Mulching Your Already Read Forward
Here at the Forward, we get some interesting e-mails and letters from readers. But in early May we had a first: A reader wrote in, asking how to repurpose old issues of the paper.
Margaret from Seattle wrote: “I garden and would like to know whether the Forward is printed with soy-based ink. If so, I would be able to safely use the newsprint as mulch when I am finished reading the paper.”
What you don’t want to keep us, Margaret?
After checking with our printer, who is also an avid gardener, we learned that the Forward is indeed printed with eco-friendly soy-based ink, and we relayed the information to Margaret. She wrote us back with some tips for recycling the paper:
-
One technique is called “lasagna layering”: Unfold the paper, wet it and use it as one of several layers placed on top of soil to enrich it. The layers include wet corrugated cardboard, grass and plant clippings, vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, leaves, straw and compost. Repeat the layers until you have built a “lasagna” that is about 12 to 18 inches in depth.
-
Wet, tear and use the recycled newsprint as the carbon component to mix with vegetable scraps and plant cuttings and a nitrogen component in a compost pile.
-
Another alternative is to use leaves or straw along with wet, torn newspaper to mulch soil around plants.
Happy composting!
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
