Reuse, Recover: Egg Shells

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As you know or are beginning to suspect, I am nuts about minimising my kitchen waste. I am always looking to reuse or recover anything I can.

Google is a great help in this but once you get in the mindset of doing it and thinking outside the box, you will start coming up with your own ideas.

So with this in mind please don’t throw out those egg shells :).

For starters, egg shells are composed of approximately 95% calcium carbonate. This is great for the soil and lots of shell goes into my composting bins.

I also crush them up somewhat and scatter them around my vegetables to control moths. You might think this an urban myth but it really works. Now I have read that there are two reasons why people think this works. Either the moths think there are too many moth eggs in the vicinity already and move on or they are laying their eggs on the chicken egg shells and the grubs don’t make it to your veggies.

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Lastly, I have heard you can use them to raise seedlings in (as little pots) but I have never done so. On a related note, the egg cartons either go back to the farmers market and reused or they go into the worm farm or compost bins.

 

What do you use egg shells for?

 

Enjoy,

PK

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5 responses to “Reuse, Recover: Egg Shells”

  1. jess__living Avatar

    Interesting! Do the shells eventually deteriorate completely into the soil?

    1. Philip Kindleysides Avatar

      Yep. The protein in then breaks down and the shells break down into powder. I am a bit lazy and just throw them into the vege patches. It doesn’t look the nicest though 😀

      1. jess__living Avatar

        Haha, I’m okay with that! Just didn’t want sharp shells staying around 🙂

  2. toni paccani Avatar
    toni paccani

    Hi Pk,

    we dry them out in the oven, crush them up finely and feed them back to the chickens that gave us the eggs in the first place

    1. Philip Kindleysides Avatar

      Brilliant. Bet it helps the older hens a lot.

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