Worm Bin Design

One of the best ways to dramatically slim down your home trash production, and reduce odors, is to collect food scraps in a container on the kitchen counter and then compost them in the yard. We've been doing this for years, and find it easy and satisfying to turn food scraps into fertilizer for the garden.

This past fall, Hilary Persky asked me to co-lead a neighborhood workshop on composting food scraps and leaves. After I showed neighbors how to build a "Wishing (the earth) Well", which combines a leaf corral with no-work, critter-proof composting of food scraps, host Tineke Thio showed us the worm bin that quickly turns her food scraps into rich compost and a liquid fertilizer called "tea" that's beneficial for houseplants.

I was impressed by the health of the worms and how they can cause us to rebrand our "foodwaste" as food for what could be considered a very wriggly pet. Though she made it look easy, I suspect there's a baseline of attention needed to keep the worms happy. She also said it's important NOT to give the worms onions, garlic, or citrus, which will cause them to flee. Thanks to Thio for her directions (below) for constructing a worm bin. From Tineke:

I learned everything I know about worms from this The Worm Book:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/198251/the-worm-book-by-loren-nancarrow/ (available at the local bookstore).

"You can build worm bins in various styles. The sketch below is a good cross section of the one I made. "Borrowed" it from this here blog.

You will need:

A pound of Red Wrigglers. I got mine from Uncle Jim.

Two tupperware bins, dark colour.

Scraps of window screen or tulle fabric

Some duct tape.

Some bricks for inside

Good whole-bottom support like 2 cinderblocks

Bottom bin:

Drill one 3/8 inch hole in the wall very close to the bottom.

Find a rubber stopper that will fit it (or install a tap if you want to get fancy).


Top bin:

Drill 1/4 inch holes in the bottom of the bin, in a Creative Pattern.

Cover bottom with window screen.


Cover:

Drill / cut holes in the cover,

Cover inside with window screen, keep in place with duct tape.

(This part is different from the picture)


Assemble:

Put bottom bin on a raised platform like a stool, a cinderblock, or a mandarin orange box

Put 2-3 bricks in the bottom. These hold up the weight of the top bin.

Put the top bin on the bricks

Put a 2-inch layer of moistened peat moss in,

Add your worms

Add vegetable scraps

Add a 1-inch layer of peat moss

Put cover in place and wait a few days

If you have the second cover, you can put that on top, loosely, to keep the light out.

Feed weekly on alternate sides:

Dig a hole, tip in your veg scraps, cover them well with more peat moss if necessary. Coffee grounds and their shredded filters work well too. Do NOT feed citrus, onions or garlic, your worms will try to move out.

After a few weeks you can start harvesting the worm "tea"

Your houseplants or garden plants will be very happy.

Once a year, I harvest most of the worms for a new batch, and put the compost out in selected places in the yard. Also great for starting seedlings.

That's it, I think.

Jaw-Dropping Film on Hemp

Though the crowd was relatively sparse for a noontime showing Friday of the film "Bringing It Home" at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival, that just left more floorspace for my jaw to occupy. The title refers to the extended exile from the U.S. of a farm crop that puts all our current ones to shame.

If hemp were a character in a movie, it would be a superhero, with talents beyond all others. In fact, it would be a whole family of "supers", like the multi-talented bunch in the 2004 movie The Incredibles. Want to get your omega 3s from vegetables rather than the overfished oceans? Hemp swoops in with the healthy oil made from its seeds. Want a "carbon negative" building material and home insulation that's less noxious to work with than fiberglass? Hemp is there for you, with "hempcrete", batten insulation and fiberboard. Clothing? Hemp's got it covered, needing less water and fertilizer to grow than cotton. Want to fight against pesticide use? Hemp again comes up super, naturally deterring pests and growing so tall and dense in the field that weeds don't have a chance. And of course, any super plant worth the name will leave the soil healthier than when it was planted. Hemp's deep root system does the job.

So, if hemp is so super, where is it? Why don't we see it growing in the farmers' fields? Why are its products limited to health food stores? Well, like the Incredibles, even though it was working miracles, long supplying fiber for paper and sails, and then coming through big time with rope and military uniforms during World War II, people complained about some collateral damage. The federal government forced it into exile, to live a quiet domestic life in Europe, Britain and Canada. It's illegal to grow in the U.S. without a permit, which turns out to be nearly impossible to get.

Hemp's banishment, one could say, was one big misunderstanding. People said it had a drug problem, but it wasn't hemp that had the problem, it was its equally brilliant but troubled sibling, marijuana. Okay, they're the same species, but hemp has essentially no THC, while marijuana is loaded. There are about a dozen grown varieties of industrial hemp, readily identifiable by inspectors. Hemp looks similar enough to marijuana, however, that a decision was made to banish both. The result of this criminalization of a super plant has been the huge cost of the failed drug war--prisons bulging, budgets draining, lives losing, developing countries destabilizing--and a loss to the public of tax revenue and the countless benefits of hemp's long and able service to mankind.

Now, it seems, hemp's black sheep sibling, after living a long, covert life on the street, somehow got into medical school and is making a comeback as a legit medication for chronic pain relief. Dr. Marijuana is now practicing in twenty states, filling medical needs while providing states with revenue and the chance to regulate rather than criminalize its use.

Could marijuana and its reformed image be the gateway not for harder drugs but for the return of its decidedly straight-laced sibling hemp? If so, hemp will return to a country in dire need of its heroic services. Carbon dioxide is seeping out of every pesticide and concrete plant, out of every pump keeping the cotton fields watered. Our diets are begging for its nutrition. Our farmers need its productivity.

I mean, come on, how many plants out there provide medicine, nutrition, clothing, housing, and the paper to sing its praises? Drafts of the Declaration of Independence, singing freedom's praises, were written on hemp paper. Let's free this "super" from legislative tyranny, so it can finally come home.

Something's (Not) Rotting in Princeton

The whole idea of recycling is to reduce the amount of trash being trucked to the landfill. What matters environmentally is not how much material gets recycled, but how little material gets thrown away. We used to try to measure environmental progress by the tonnage of material recycled. In fact, the main duty of municipal recycling coordinators in New Jersey is to compile how many tons of paper, plastic, glass, etc. got recycled in each town. But the numbers have been losing their meaning. Heavy glass is being replaced by light plastic bottles. Fewer people get newspapers. So tonnages can go down even if people are being more conscientious about recycling.

This is why Sustainable Princeton's goal for solid waste doesn't mention recyclables, but instead puts the focus on trash reduction: 50% by 2016. (Hey, that's coming up!)

Recycling will help reach that goal, but you can see in the two photos that, even when recycling is done well, the trash cans are still overflowing. The basic rule of recycling is being followed here. The recycling containers are visually distinct, and paired with the trash containers. So, why is the majority of material still ending up in the trash?

What's missing is an additional container that would hold compostables. Many cafes have shifted away from styrofoam, fortunately, but there's no protocol in place to keep all the resulting paper containers from filling the trash can. Food waste and all of these food-soiled paper containers should be getting composted. The result, as any Princeton resident who either composts in the backyard or has signed up for the curbside service has discovered, is a dramatic reduction in trash volume and weight.

There are a number of obstacles in the way of doing what obviously needs to be done. One for merchants is space constraints, both in the store and in the back alley. You'd think that keeping compostables out of the trash would greatly reduce the footprint of trash cans and dumpsters, but it would require considerable motivation and commitment to change the status quo. The other is that, though a more local composting facility is in the works, the closest current destination for foodwaste is 70 miles south in Wilmington, Delaware.

In the well-meaning time, while all of this is getting worked out by the often seemingly powerless powers that be, there are individual solutions. A year or two ago, after consuming a large dose of environmental documentaries at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival, I decided to incorporate some aspects of camping into my town lifestyle. Camping is pleasurable. We don't get around to it very often, so why not make it part of everyday life? One way is to emulate the "leave no trace" approach to camping. Pack it in, pack it out. And so the paper products I use at the cafe get scrunched up in a pocket or a backpack, to be carried home and either used to start a fire in the woodstove or composted with the food scraps in the backyard. This approach to camping avoids the long drive to some distant campground, and the local "campsite" serves a great cappuccino.

Will Foodwaste Recycling Succeed in Princeton's Public Schools?

Earlier in the fall, some rollout bins labeled for foodwaste showed up behind the Princeton High School. I had heard that foodwaste recycling was going to begin at the public schools, but the bins remained empty. Finally, I emailed superintendent Judy Wilson to ask what was up. A response came from facilities head, Gary Weisman, a week later:

"In response to your recent inquiry regarding food waste recycling at PHS, I wanted you to know that the program is underway and has been for the past few weeks. The bins have been on-site since September, but there were many factors that caused us to delay implementation. All schools are currently on board, but no one should be under the illusion that the ongoing implementaton will be seamless. However, with the support of our administration, custodial staff, aides and students we are hopeful that the program will quickly become part of our normal routine." --Gary Weisman, Dec. 2

Since then, plastic bags (presumably compostable plastic) of foodwaste have begun to show up in the bins. The opportunity here goes beyond saving some money by reducing the amount of trash headed for the landfill. One of the biggest lessons kids can learn is the cumulative power of our individual actions. Each individual's impact seems too minor to be concerned about, but if multiplied by everyone else doing the same thing, the result is game changing. 

Though this philosophy is drilled into athletes, it's in everyday life that the game is being played for keeps. The cumulative impact of individual actions--like recycling, voting, and how much carbon we pump into the atmosphere--determines what sort of future we will share. If one student throws non-compostables in the cafeteria compost bin, the custodians are likely to toss the whole contaminated bagful into the trash, sabotaging everyone else's efforts to make the system work. Everyone has to assume responsibility and pitch in. Foodwaste recycling will be toughest at the high school, where students are allowed to eat lunch anywhere in the school. That dispersion and general lack of supervision makes it all the more important that an ethic of recycling be promoted and sustained, lest cynicism grow about whether the high school's recycling program is actually functioning. 

What I've heard from conversations with staff fits with my experience back in 2007, while helping get recycling restarted at the public schools. Success is most assured if there's someone at the bin in the schools' cafeterias, ingraining new habits by making sure students throw their scraps and other waste in the right bins. This is essentially the role a coach plays with a sports team. The compost bin needs to be paired with the recycling and trash bins, so students don't have to walk extra steps. Signage has to be clear, both in word and, for those too distracted to notice labels, the "body language" of the containers. There has to be monitoring out back to make sure the after hours custodians aren't just throwing everything in the trash dumpster. To overcome cynicism, there needs to be feedback and updates so students have some assurance that what they are dutifully throwing in the recycling bins is actually getting recycled. Because it's so easy for recycling programs to fall apart over time, someone in each school with passion for recycling needs to be designated to monitor the program over time.

Above all, the administrators have to lead, to send a message repeatedly to staff and students that recycling matters. Otherwise, everyone will take silence to equal indifference. Recycling is not something peripheral to the educational experience, but central to the individual's understanding of his/her place in the world and impact upon it. It's a habit students can learn and carry with them for a lifetime.

In sports, there's a coach, and someone keeping score. Recycling is essentially a sport being played without any ongoing coaching for the individual players, and without a score at the end of the week (e.g. pounds of foodwaste diverted from the trashstream) that people can take pride in or work to improve. 

More tips on making recycling work in the workplace can be found at this link.

For information on how foodwaste may in the future be hauled to Trenton for composting and biogas production, rather than to the current composting site an hour away in Wilmington, links here and here are a start.