Vermicomposting

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (http://www.epa.gov/foodrecovery/), landfills are composed of 21% food waste, 15% paper and paperboard, 9% yard trimmings, and 8% wood. So over 50% of the "trash" going to the landfill is compostable!!

You may be thinking, yea but if I'm sending compostable materials to the landfill, they will decompose into the black gold (A.K.A) fertilizer that everybody is raving about. Wrong.

"When food is disposed in a landfill it rots and becomes a significant source of methane - a potent greenhouse gas with 21 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. Landfills are a major source of human-related methane in the United States, accounting for more than 20 percent of all methane emissions" ((http://www.epa.gov/foodrecovery/).
 

Further, composting requires a bit of ingenuity, for example, when composting it is crucial to get the correct ratio of 70% “brows” to 30% “greens”. Brown materials consist of mostly Carbon such as: cardboard, paper, sawdust, wood chips, twigs, and drier lint…in other words “anything that doesn’t smell bad when it gets wet.” On the contrary, green materials are Nitrogenous, things like fruit and vegetable scraps…the things that fruit flies buzz about. 

Please check out the following link to see examples of brows and greens (http://eartheasy.com/grow_compost.html).

If you have a good ratio Carbon to Nitrogen, the microorganisms that go to work breaking down the food waste will be able to thrive.

If you live in an apartment, like me, with very limited yard space, you should consider vermicomposting. It’s composting that is accelerated by the use of worms, specifically, Red Wigglers. Normally food scraps take 6 months to a year to turn into compost. These worms eat up to half their body weight every day, so divide the weight of worms you have by two, and this is the amount of food scraps you can add to your bin everyday. In about two months you will have “black gold” A.K.A. worm poop. I found a lot of information on: http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/vermicomposting-and-vermiculture-worms-bins-and-how-to-get-started.html

http://www.missmodish.com/modish/2008/09/the-low-down-on.html

So it’s simple, you feed your worms, they eat and they poop. Worms are also hermaphroditic, so each worm has both sex organs, however, two worms are needed to make babies. Every once in a while your worms will wriggle into a mating worm ball.

So Slack made me an awesome worm bin, drill holes in the bottom for aeration and gave it a hinged lid. I got my worms in the sports section of WalMart…yea, they were going to be used as bait.You have to get the correct moisture level too wet and the worms crawl out. So far I have had 4 casualties. But I have also had many babies born. 

Things to remember

* Don't add animal product/waste to bin=bad smell and worms can't digest fats

* Get the correct ration of 70% browns to 30% greens

* Monitor the moisture- Soak browns and wring them out before adding them to the bin (too wet, worms drown, too dry and they shrivel)

* Once you have fertilizer, use it to pot a plant or give it as a gift.