Save the World with Worms!
Feed worms, not landfills! Make awesome compost, keep food scraps out of landfills, and reduce greenhouse gases with worms.
Leader
Nathan Rutz
Location
1288 Marquette St Cleveland, OH 44114
About the project
Composting keeps food waste of landfills and reduces climate change gases, but what do you do if you live in an apartment? Every time I give a workshop on composting, someone asks me how to compost in their apartment. So far, I have only been able to say "get some worms!" and leave them on their own.
Composting with worms is a fun way to compost home food scraps in a smaller space than a traditional compost pile. Many existing worm kits are unnecessarily expensive and complicated. I want to develop an inexpensive and simple worm composting system for home use that can help Clevelanders without yards make their own compost.
We'll create and fine tune an inexpensive home worm composting system. We'll run tests on how much food waste can be fed to different population densities of worms and how much should be added on what schedule to prevent flies. We'll grow a population of worms to supply the Cleveland area with vigorous healthy composting worms.
Then we'll teach Clevelanders how to compost at home, in apartments, and be able to offer a well thought out, tested, worm composting system.
The Steps
1. We'll buy materials for the worm growing habitat and set it up by March 2018
2. We'll begin iteration of worm composting kits April 2018
3. We'll do mini tests with a few apartment living folks May 2018
4. We'll debut the ready to use worm kit with worm composting workshops at our facility in St. Clair - Superior and make them available througout the city and beyond.
Why we‘re doing it
Food waste is a huge problem, but even worse is our culture's paradigm of disconnection and abstraction. People typically get food from grocery and corner stores where food is packaged in a shiny container or bag as though it appeared there by magic. This disconnection from the human work and ecology of how food comes to be reinforces our disconnection from land and our common human heritage as agricultural people who are part of the larger ecosystem of the earth.
The simple act of composting food scraps with the help of humble animals, seeing them work, and feeling the satisfaction of recycling food scraps into healthy compost instead of rotting in a landfill, begins to heal the disconnections between people and land. We want to facilitate reconnection and a shift in thinking toward wholes, things real and present and connected. We believe that when we think in systems and hold the well being of the biotic community and human family at the center of our thought, goodness follows. With right thinking we change the whole of our behaviors and relationships, which is absolutely necessary if humans are to reverse climate change while creating a more just and equitable society.