Compost or Not

Banana skin yes. Plastic wrapper no. Chicken bone, and now we are having a conversation.

The sheet includes several genuinely tricky items because the easy ones teach nothing. Cooked rice, citrus peel and a paper cup with a plastic lining all sit in the difficult column, and each has a real reason.

We run this beside an actual working compost heap. Sorting into a bin you can then go and look at makes the whole thing concrete.

The page has the sorting frame, the difficult items flagged, and the reasons in adult language so you can explain them. Also the one practical warning, which is that a tropical compost heap with cooked food in it attracts rats within about a week. We learned that thoroughly.