Will it hurt? Nope, not at all unless you seriously put tons down and start repelling water from the soil. Which would be difficult.

However, paper has an exceptionally high carbon to nitrogen ratio at 150, give or take. Which means decay will be incredibly slow as C:N ratios of around 30 are optimal. Below that, it tends to stink when it rots. Above that, decay slows.

So you'd be looking at it for a really, really long time.

To get around that, apply Milorganite or any other high-nitrogen organic (like soybean meal or cottonseed meal) atop it. That'll put enough organic nitrogen in place to assist with the decay. It'll probably take several feedings with Milo or soy or cottonseed until the paper is completely gone, but it'll work.

Hmm, that sounds promising. My biggest problem is going to be getting it down through the turf to the soil. About 3/4 of the lawn is so thick you can't see the soil and the rest is pretty thick. I might do a test area in the back lawn to see if I can get it chopped up enough so that it's not visible. I'll definitely post the results at some point.

Mow over it and then irrigate (or do it just before a rainfall). My lawn's so thick it feels like shag carpet, but even sawdust gets down in there.

forsheems, if you could update your post with how it works out, I'd be appreciative - I'm very curious to see how this works out for you. I have access to shredded paper and if that could be turned into some form of beneficial material for my lawn, that'd be great.

Well, I gave it a try this evening after work. Spread the shredded paper out on a section of the back lawn. Must have made at least 15 passes over it but it's pretty visible. From a distance it looks almost like cherry blossoms. One thing I will add, my mower is a 52" Hustler zero turn and it's not actually set up as a mulching mower. It does really well chopping up leaves in the fall normally taking no more than 4 passes to make a ton of leaves completely disappear but the paper is obviously more of a challenge. I would imagine a true mulching set up might do a much better job so someone else might have to step up with that experiment. For now this is going on the back burner until I can come up with a better way to do it.

How shredded is this paper? Is it in thin strips? Wide strips? Or is it pulverized into dust?
Paper is treated cellulose and not really a fast decomposer. Worms like it, though.

Would anyone be willing to share a link to the 'shampoo treatment' post that describes the process step-by-step? I tried searching for it, but with the new Houzz format, I'm having quite a bit of difficulty finding certain posts that were created prior to GardenWeb getting bought out.

I'm trying to compile a list of helpful links (like the Bermuda Bible, shampoo treatment, dchall's organic fertilizer post, etc) that I can put into one post. Mostly for my benefit, but may be useful for others.

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1512913/apllying-baby-shampoo?n=14

That might help you out!

David, the paper was primarily old newspapers shredded through a regular paper shredder so they are roughly 1/4" wide and about 4" long. I do believe if my mower was set up as a mulcher it would most likely do the trick. It just seemed to blow the strips out the discharge chute without doing much chopping. It did look a little better after a rain but the paper is still visible.

Thank you very much morpheus - much appreciated.

Rather than directly mulch the white pieces of shredded paper to the lawn, which will not look as nice as green grass clippings drying out, you could either increase the size of your compost pile (or rather, piles), and then compost the shredded papers also, or if you don't want to add more piles, just add the paper to your current compost pile.

With 20k square feet of yard space, I imagine you can compost quite a bit as the year goes by. Paper will disintegrate faster than leaves, as well as become dark colored by being in the compost, so you would not have to leave it in the compost pile as long as other items.

Additionally, using that paper for worm composting will turn the paper into worm castings much faster than composting outside.