Like you our trash collection picks up the "green bin". They have started taking all kinds of kitchen compose in addition to the grass and shrubbery clippings. The guy actually stopped while I was working in my shop (aka garage) and told me they will also take scrap wood along with my bagged sawdust. So, I'm set.
However, if your city pickup doesn't do this try a local garden club. I use to provide them with sawdust which they then added to some compost bin. Apparently they liked it. The small scraps of wood I always put into the green bin. The thought behind that was if they cutoffs from a tree limb - they'll take my cutoffs.
The local school provides sawdust to be used by farmers for use in horse/cow stalls.
As others have said, it makes great compost; my wife has been getting me to save it for her garden, but I think my supply will eventually overwhelm her demand.
I give mine to a mechanic friend.. he uses it for floor dry to clean up oil spills.. you have to be carefull using it for animal bedding as walnut sawdust does bad stuff to horses when they stand in it.
Walnut dust isn't just bad for horses.
It's also toxic to most other plants.
Not much grows underneath walnut trees.
Lost of different sawdusts are toxic in various ways.
Back when I had a garden I used to go behind the local Starbucks and pick up big bags of spent coffee grounds from their green bins. (It's normally picked up by the recycle truck but they don't mind at all if you do it for them.) I'd mix the coffee with my sawdust, lawn clippings, kitchen waste etc. and make absolutely incredible compost. The combination attracted worms by the thousands.
Among other things, I grew delphiniums a full 8 feet tall using that stuff. I don't know about where you live, but that's fairly amazing around here.
Definitely compost it if you can.
I'm a small time woodworker but on a project I can make 6-10 thirty gallon bags. My transfer station has a mulch pile for leaves and chips. The culprit is the planer. Man, that can fill up my dust bag in a short time.
All my shavings and dust goes into my neighbours and our composter.
Once your neighbours see how nice a compost it makes they will ask for it.
If composting and you are putting in lawn clippings layers of sawdust stop them becoming a layer of slime and my worms seem to flourish.
I don't give it to anyone for animals as my dust and shavings are mixed. Shavings are a different matter. I however tell folk to remove the dust first.
In winter I burn it. I use a snorkel in my wood-burning stove this stops the sawdust smothering the flame.
When it is burned the ashes are very popular with gardeners who use this potash on flowers and vegetables. Don't use it on the garden if you use coal.
Offcuts burn. But remember your offcuts are a treasure to pen-makers. I've several folk who collect the offcuts one makes jewellery and I'm sure within LJ's a share could be done for shipping cost.
rickf16- I had a friend who used to dump his sawdust in the woods behind his house. One day the DNR found out and fined him big time for improper disposal of toxic waste!
I found a community garden co-op type place. They've got a giant compost and all I've got to do is drop off the bags and they take care of everything, they told me that they have some layering system--fine by me!
I use some of it for fire starters for fireplace fires. I mix it with melted wax and pack it into egg carton compartments and let it harden. Then you can just break off one of the 12 cups and put it in the fireplace and light it…works great and no smoke. The rest goes in the compost.
I got in a big arguement with my city's sanitation dept. They told me they can't take sawdust in our yard waste program. Said that sawdust doesn't break down like green grass, leaves, green and dead limbs. I asked how that even made sense. Samy types of wood as dead limbs and it's already chewed up. No dice. They won't take it. Told me to send it to the landfill. Go figure. For a forward looking communtiy we've got some backward thinking people running things. Still looking for a reasonable alternative.
Dust collector waste goes in the garbage. Sometimes I save handplane shavings for fire tinder. Great for my son's Scout campouts. Walnut smells especially nice when burned.
Dust, chips, and shavings, non toxics get used as mulch, toxics get bagged up and put with the green waste.
cutoffs get saved up and burned in the fire pit on the patio, unless it was a nut or fruit bearing hardwood, particularly apple, mesquite, or pecan, those cutoffs go in the smoker for Texas smoked BBQ brisket…
Ive heard you can donate it to animal shelters for bedding but I dont know details. I was thinking of calling the humane society nearby to see if they could use it.
Yeah, we started making fire starters a number of years ago. It was kind of funny because I had been using newspaper to start the fire and would always get smoke in the room. Once I switched to the homemade fire starters, no smoke. We have friends that do a lot of garage sales and have connections to churches so they pick up all the used candles they can find for us so we have a great program going on.
Last month we made 24 dozen starters.
I was researching the idea of composting sawdust a while back… I found this article helpful, it describes why it can be more difficult to compost sawdust compared to leaves for example….
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