Don’t throw away eggshells just yet. Learn practical ways boiled eggshells can be reused around the home and garden instead of going straight into the trash.
Eggshells usually end up in the garbage without a second thought. But these thin, brittle shells contain calcium carbonate and can be repurposed in several simple ways around the home and garden.
One popular old-fashioned method is to boil, dry, and crush eggshells before putting them to use. While eggshells aren’t a miracle solution, they can be a useful low-cost addition to everyday household routines.
1. Give Your Garden an Extra Calcium Boost
Eggshells are mostly calcium carbonate. When thoroughly cleaned, dried, and crushed, they can be incorporated into garden soil.
However, there’s an important detail: eggshells break down relatively slowly. They aren’t an instant fertilizer. Finely grinding them helps them break down faster than leaving large pieces in the soil.
2. Reduce Kitchen Waste
Instead of throwing every eggshell into the trash, you can collect them in a container.
After using eggs, rinse the shells, boil them if you want to sanitize them, allow them to dry completely, and crush them. This creates a simple material that can potentially be reused rather than discarded.
3. Add Them to Compost
Crushed eggshells can also be added to a compost pile.
They contribute minerals, particularly calcium, but they shouldn’t be considered a replacement for the main ingredients of good compost, such as vegetable scraps, leaves, grass clippings, and other suitable organic material.
4. Use Them Around Certain Garden Plants
Finely crushed eggshells are sometimes sprinkled around plants as part of traditional gardening practices.
You may see claims that eggshells are an instant solution for slugs and snails, but evidence for this is limited. Sharp shell pieces shouldn’t be treated as a guaranteed pest-control method.
5. Make Eggshell Powder
If you want to reuse eggshells more easily, dry them thoroughly and grind them into a fine powder.
A clean coffee or spice grinder can make this process easier. Keep the resulting powder in a dry, sealed container until you’re ready to use it for appropriate gardening or composting purposes.
How to Prepare Eggshells
- Rinse the shells thoroughly after cracking the eggs.
- Boil them for several minutes if you want to sanitize them.
- Allow them to dry completely.
- Crush or grind them into small pieces or powder.
- Store them somewhere dry if you’re not using them immediately.
One Important Reminder
Eggshells are useful, but they’re not a cure-all. Many viral posts claim that boiled eggshell water can treat numerous health conditions or provide dramatic nutritional benefits. Those claims shouldn’t be accepted without good scientific evidence.
For the garden and compost, however, properly prepared eggshells can be a simple way to give something that would normally become waste a second life.