Shavings - ecologically sound?

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Orangehorse

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I bought one bag of paper bedding and one bag of something else, not sure, hemp?

I only need a bit of something for the low place where the urine collects as I use straw for the main bed.

I am trying these to find which is the most absorbant. But it also made me thing whether it is really ecologically sound to buy shavings which are made from chopped down trees, just to bed horses on.

Straw, paper, hemp stalks, flax stalks are all waste products. Surely they are the better option.
 
On a ecological basis probably flax and hemp would be the greener option as they require less fertilizers etc than straw, most shavings are from 'cropped' trees but i imagine the costs in harvesting and producing the wood is quite high alongside transport, don't know how much of the shavings used in the uk are grown here? Don't know about paper.
 
Straw is a waste product, if a farmer is growing wheat whether organic or not, there is going to be straw.
Some do prefer to chop it and put it back on the land, and then there are straw fired power stations starting up as well, so it does have a value. No one is going to be paid to take it away.
 
We sell a lot of Miscanthus, it is a crop which after cutting grows back. I did ask a shavings supplier where the wood came from and he was rather vague, they do say it is a byproduct of the building industry though.
 
I have concerns when I see how far some have been trnasported and the amount of plastic packaging.
 
I use Bliss Bedding - rape straw, I do like the sound of the elephant grass though if the crop just grows back. Rape straw breaks down on the muckheap fairly quickly too and the other nice thing about Bliss is that the bag it comes in is completely biodegradable so it can go on the muckheap!
 
The mucky shavings from our stables are taken away to make bricks. How's that for recycling, eh?
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