Think twice before throwing out old newspapers; they may serve as a valuable soil amendment.
A soil amendment is a collective, rather vague term for any material that is used to supplement or "amend" nutrients that a soil would otherwise lack, such as fertilizers, compost and potting soil. Amendments make it possible for gardeners to grow nearly any plant rather than confine themselves to the types of plants that will grow well in their outside soil in an unamended state. There are many ways to categorize types of soil amendments; one classifies according to whether their ingredients are synthetic (derived from oil and petroleum products) or organic (derived from myriad natural materials such as peat moss, compost, manure and paper).
Organic Soil Amendments
For a soil amendment to be considered organic, it must contain only naturally occurring substances and use those substances to deliver essential nutrients to the soil. Among materials used for organic soil amendments are topsoil, compost, sand, pine bark, peat moss, bone meal, fish meal, animal manure and many others. Each of these materials imparts varying amounts of plant nutrients to soil. Another material used for soil amendment is -- somewhat surprisingly -- paper.
Paper as Soil Amendment
Any paper waste, with a few minor exceptions, can be used as a soil amendment. Newspapers can be ground up and added to a homemade potting soil, for instance, though newspapers should never make up more than 25 percent of the potting soil by volume. Glossy color ads and pages should never be used. Gypsum drywall also shows promise as a soil amendment, because the gypsum itself and the paper layers surrounding it can impart essential nutrients to the soil. Practically any other type of paper can be used; if you aren't sure whether to use a certain kind of paper, because of concerns over toxicity of ink, for instance, consult a local university extension office.
Uses
Ground-up paper is useful as a soil amendment because of its high levels of carbon and nitrogen, but a corollary usefulness for paper as a soil amendment is as an environmentally sustainable means for discarding paper. Huge amounts of paper from schools, paper mills, the timber industry, office buildings, newspaper offices, paper shredding companies and the like are discarded every year; using paper as a soil amendment is a useful and efficient ways of recycling large amounts of this paper waste.
Effectiveness
A recent study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison compared the effectiveness of several common soil amendments: corn stalks, straw, corn silage, fall leaves, sawdust, wood chips and many other materials. While newspaper was found to have a huge concentration of nitrogen, it's attendant high concentration of carbon means that microbes in soil that break down the paper will use a great deal of the nitrogen for their own metabolic needs rather than the nitrogen's being released in the soil, as is the case with soil amendments such as manure.
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