Vermiculture (worm composting)

I’ve heard that 15% of everything that goes into our landfills is food. I’ve also heard that the average American throws out a pound of food a day. I haven’t verified this information so I can’t really say if this is fact or not. Since food that decays in our landfills produces methane gas and since methane gas is supposedly more detrimental to global warming than CO2 I’ve decided to do something about my food scraps.

Being a single guy who lives alone it’s tough to keep produce fresh. Most people probably just throw their food scraps in the trash. I know I used to. Banana peels, broccoli stems, etc. When I realized how much food waste I was throwing out I decided to compost it instead.

I bought something called a “Worm Factory”. It’s just a fancy worm bin used for vermiculture or worm composting. Now there are a plethora of websites that will show you how to make your own but I decided just to buy one. It was pretty easy to set up and my worms arrived just the other day. The red worms that I’m using will consume half their body weight each day of food scraps. Since I bought two pounds of worms I should be able to dispose of a pound of food each day. I’ll keep you posted on that.

I’m not really surprised by people’s reactions when I tell them I have a bin of worms in my apartment that I use for disposing of my food scraps. There are a lot of misconceptions about the whole process. My purpose here is not to dispel these misconceptions but I will tell you that if you think a worm bin will smell bad or attract pests you can do a search in your favorite search engine and find out that’s not the case. A properly maintained worm bin doesn’t smell like rotting food or attract insects or rodents.

I’ll post some pictures of my “Worm Factory” in later posts. Making your own worm bin is a very easy and inexpensive endeavor. If you’d care to see what’s involved just do a search. I would also be glad to post some links if anyone is interested.