How can I reuse or recycle egg shells?
I was feeling a little poorly the other day so we had the standard unwell tea: chucky eggs and soldiers*.
The military men and their ovoid shaped compadres did their work and by the next day, I was up and around again – wondering what to do with the remaining egg shells.
I have used broken eggs shells in the garden in the past, to try to deter slugs and snails from my seedlings but I don’t know if it was worth it since the molluscs seemed to get through anyway. So does that actually work?
And are there any better uses for them?
(* boiled eggs and toast sliced thinly so that it can be dunked in the aforementioned eggs if the yolks are soft enough)
Best Suggestions
- Reuse: Crush them up and use them to deter slugs and snails from attacking your precious seedlings – they don’t like the rough surface so won’t cross a barrier made from shells.
- Recycle: A beautiful bit of recycling – bake the shells (to kill any bacteria) then crush them up and add them to chicken food/grit. The chickens reabsorb the calcium and other minerals from the shells and use them to create new eggs!
- See the comments below for more suggestions and ideas
My egg shells just get crushed and thrown in the compost bin.
Leave ‘em whole and they take a age to breakdown, so crush ‘em first.
Spreading around plants does deter the slugs a bit, but nothing is truely effective in keeping snails off yer lovely leaves. I have hostas that look like lace curtains..!!
Oh, tell me abou t it! I keep trying with different quantities and size of shells fragments but they always seem to get through. I’m starting to think slugs can jump AND fly when there are tasty seedlings to be eaten.
Doesn’t salt dry them up or something? Perhaps sprinkling sea salt around your plants will stop the slugs eating them.
I haven’t tried this but apparently you can use them to get tea/coffee stains off the inside of thermos flasks.
Just crush the (clean) shells up really small, then put them in the flask with some water and shake it up. The grains of shell are abrasive enough to remove the stains but won’t damage the lining – apparently.
As regards the hostas. Try this.
Mine are now in pots, not in the ground.
I have smeared vaseline – or rather, cheap £Shop petroleum jelly – all over the rim of the pot. And the slugs slide off – well some do..!!
Grind up the shells, add to some vinegar until saturated, boil until reduced by half, and add any sort of alcohol. Use the resulting gel under you chafing dish or in your votive holder instead of buying Sterno. A bit of salt in the vinegar will turn the flame yellow.
Feed them to your dog to make the coat nice and shiny! Crush them up and add them into their food. Since they have been cooked, it is safe for a dog to eat. My dog gets whole eggs whizzed into his food regularly (drop them in the blender with some veg).
good on you Scott a bit of chem is always good but I thiuk the compost idea is the best
People used to wash them, dry them slowly in an oven and crush them up into a fine powder to add to foods so that they could up their calcium intake. Useful for the elderly and babes.
Wash them and try one of the following ideas :
Make flowerpots of them: http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.0e0eb51a2e6b5ad593598e10d373a0a0/?vgnextoid=857b2e912b11f010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&autonomy_kw=eggshell&rsc=header_1
or
http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.0e0eb51a2e6b5ad593598e10d373a0a0/?vgnextoid=865ec137bf22f010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&autonomy_kw=eggshell&rsc=header_4
Make egg candles :
http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.3a0656639de62ad593598e10d373a0a0/?vgnextoid=8f5ba87663b71110VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&autonomy_kw=eggshell&rsc=header_3
Egg votives :
http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.0e0eb51a2e6b5ad593598e10d373a0a0/?vgnextoid=468b2e912b11f010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&autonomy_kw=eggshell&rsc=header_12
my mother in law used to put them in a warm oven after baking biscuits and dry them out, and crush them and feed them to the chickens so they would have more calcium. If you don’t bake them first, the chickens will get a taste for the eggs and start eating their eggs, that is what she said.
I went to a talk on biodynamics yesterday and he mentioned about using baked egg shell in the compost. I meant to ask why baked? but didn’t get the chance, does anyone know why. is it to make them break down faster? does it make it easier for the calcium to be released into the soil? or is there another reason.
I always thought it was to make them less interesting to rats.
mmmm eggs
I smash mine into little pieces then mix them with vasaline. I then coat credit card sized bits of cardboard with the mixture and insert the said items into cash machines. It wrecks the machines good and proper!
I’ve turned them into tealight egg candles. http://ecomonster.com/?page_id=3&category=6&product_id=11
save egg shells in a big pot and several months later it would be a nice fertile for plants~!
Take a mortar and pestle to them and then sprinkle them in the compost bin. My friend paper-mache’s them into beautiful Christmas ornaments, like really really pretty.
They use eggshells a lot in lacquer work in Asia, also could also be used for neat effects when painting. It’d get a lot of texture going with milk paint and hide glue. Or they could be dyed quite easily and sealed with a natural wax or oil for any sort of art project. There’s lots of free & natural dyestuff out in the yard or fields even.
Currently I’m adding my excess eggshells to my Bokashi compost (anaerobic, container composting.) I have finally just started the Bokashi after a long bout of interest, so I can’t say just yet how quickly it works by comparison of traditional compost. Overall, Bokashi is supposed to be a lot faster though! In the very least it adds calcium to my end fertilizer product and helps the anaerobic environment thanks to their less porous texture (I only crush them flat.)
Haha, and the strangest thing I’ve done with eggshells was definitely adding them to chocolate cake. It had to be done with the right ingredients and small enough size to make the crunch not be too obnoxious. But, when I got it right it was quite pleasant. I just crushed the whole egg in for my recipe. ^-^
Oh, and I almost forgot. I have a tooth-powder with calcium carbonate. I’m sure the baked/ground up eggshells could be used in it’s place for nice clean teeth…and then maybe follow up on the above suggestion and use it as a supplement to. If you feel really ambitious you could just just swallow it after brushing. But, that always seems weird for me, lol. Too many years of regular toothpaste I guess.
I can’t believe you people are actually talking about recycling EGG SHELLS!!! Wow. What a waste. How much energy is consumed by baking the egg shells, blending the egg whole to feed to your dog, etc? Recycling largely is counter productive, and is a waste of time.
For the dogs, I don’t think you have to bake them… And you can do the grinding manually and mix it into the food yourself.
I’ve been searching on the Internet and haven’t really read that the eggshells have to be cooked. What I see is a lot of recommendations of giving it to your canine.
Then why are you on this website? Where do you think all of our waste is going to go if at some point we don’t recycle the mass of it? Can we come dump it in your yard?
Make Cascarones! Confetti Eggs. They are great for parties, especially kid parties.
http://www.project-tnt.com/fiesta/Make%20Eggs.htm
We also color them and use them as Easter Eggs.
i heard that u can wash egg shells and dceorate them
Wow! I always knew that egg shells were good for compost but I never considered all these other uses…
Recycling is definately not ‘largely counter productive’ see the WRAP life cycle analysis of recycling compared to landfill and incineration http://www.wrap.org.uk/downloads/Recycling_LCA_Report_Executive_Summary_Sept_2006.423270bb.2839.pdf
I alternate between the compost heap and my cacti. Crushed eggshells are supposed to be good for cactus.
I turn eggshells into tiny planters for spring time (or anytime for that matter) decorations. I like to plant wheat or oat grass in them. You can even draw faces on them and make your own version of chia pets.
Here are instructions for making them.
http://containergardening.about.com/od/floweringcontainergarden/ss/Eggcontainergardens.htm