Waste degradation time

Used paper collected for paper recycling in Ponte a Serraglio near Bagni di Lucca, Italy

Unfortunately, one of my family members is allergic/asthmatic and this comes with enormous consumption of paper tissues.

We're very conscious of the fact that this is an unnecessary strain on the environment.

We already stay away from the small packs, and only opt for tissues made of recycled paper and packed in easily recyclable packaging, but that's still a lot of trash.

So I started looking at the degradation times for tissues, and on ecowarriors.it page I've found the following list (I've sorted it according to time):

Average waste natural degradation time in the soil:

Waste material	Time to degrade
A cardboard box	2 months
An apple core	3 months
Paper tissues and napkins	3 months
Matches	6 months
Newspapers	6 months
A cotton or woollen garment	1 year
A milk or juice carton	1 year
A cigarette end	1-2 years
Chewing-gum	5 years
Magazines	over 10 years
An aluminium can for drinks	10-100 years
Telephone and top-ups cards	over 100 years
A glass bottle	about 400 years
A disposable diaper	circa 400 years
A plastic bottle or bag	100-1000 years
Plastic dishes and cutlery	100-1000 years
A polystyrene case	over 1000 years

I think the colours are pretty self-explanatory.

And since tissues land in 3 months green category, we've decided to place them simply into our compost box. 

As my husband said: "We'll return our bacteria to the environment ;)"

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