🟤 Compost

Composteur · the compost bin

Did it grow?

Raw or cooked, if it came off a plant or a plate it can go in. Mix wet scraps with dry brown material.

Note

SMECTOM supplies composters and lends a shredder free of charge — one hour of training first.

What goes here

From the kitchen

• Vegetable peelings
• Citrus peel
• Food scraps cooked leftovers
• Crushed eggshells
• Coffee filters
• Soft paper coffee pods
• Kitchen roll if unsoiled
• Tea bags † paper only, staple out
• Spoiled fruit & vegetables †

Dry brown material

• Dead leaves †
• Straw & hay †
• Shredded branches † free shredder loan
• Sawdust † untreated wood
• Cardboard † plain, torn small
• Egg boxes † plain card, torn up

Not here — where it goes instead

🟢 Green bin — trash

Cat litter, mineral or plant-based · animal droppings · cold ashes · shellfish shells · and “compostable” bags, which do not break down in a garden heap. See Green Bin — General Waste.

🔴 Déchèterie

Branches and prunings — unless you shred them first, in which case they are perfect brown material. See Déchèterie — Recycling Centre.

🟡 Yellow bin

Yoghurt pots, trays, film and all other food packaging — empty the food into the compost, the packaging into the yellow bin. See Yellow Bin — Recyclables.

🔵 Blue bin — glass

Jars and bottles, once emptied and scraped out. See Blue Bin — Glass.

Handling

• Two parts wet, one part dry. Wet scraps alone go slimy and smell.
• Chop it small, turn it over. Smaller pieces break down far faster.

Printable sheet

Compost — A4 sheet (PDF) — print at 100 % scale, single sided. All nine sheets together: all-sheets.pdf.

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Items marked † are the general French sorting rule for this stream, not entries in SMECTOM’s Mémo Tri 2026. Everything else on this page is taken from the mémo. See Waste Sorting Guide for the overview and Waste & Recycling Collection for the pickup schedule and access card.