happy transformation

For the last few months at our building site, we've had a big pile out front that looks like this:

Scrap un-burnable lumber 4-and-a-half feet tall. We had a dilemma because we didn't want to put it in the dump, recycling it was proving to be super challenging, and our main solution of getting it chipped up into mulch for our yard was not working out because the truck we were planning to use got repossessed by the bank! Ugh!

On Friday, my knight in shining armor showed up at the house across the street in the form of this truck:

They were willing to head over to our house and throw that gigantic pile of scrap lumber into their chipper and turn it into this!

You can't possibly imagine how happy this pile makes me. It means 3 things:

1. I don't have to send a huge pile of useable material to the landfill.
2. I don't have a huge pile of unsightly garbage in my front yard anymore.
3. I will have lots of luscious compost in the near future after we add nitrogen and mix it up.

For those who are likely to be curious, we did a lot of research about the glues in OSB and plywood and their potential for compost. The glues used quickly biodegrade into non-toxic compost once the wood is chipped up, as they are based on formaldehydes, naturally occurring organic compounds that are involved in metabolic chain reactions. We left out the pressure-treated lumber scraps, as the chemicals they are treated with are toxic and are designed to prevent biodegradation.

Yay for compost!