Worm Composting For Your Family

We live in the eco-bubble of the San Francisco Bay Area. It didn't really occur to me that perhaps the rest of the world wasn't doing many of the things that we find commonplace to keep our environment healthy until last year when we visited Grandma's house in Florida. Not only does she not recycle, but it's not even really her fault as her county doesn't even pick up recycling! I'm guessing she could probably drive to a recycling center, but Florida is a big place and it takes 15 minutes just to drive to the grocery store, much less some random recycling center with all your stinky bottles in the back.

Now, Grandma and everyone else should be paying attention by now to the many news reports about our environmental crisis. But I can see how one would get distracted from it, especially when your friends and neighbors aren't doing anything about it, either. Here's hoping that when we visit this year there will now be a recycling bin available to us. And here's hoping that the education of Floridians and others about the state of our environment will be improved and on point. Composting, carbon emissions, food waste, water waste, chemical usage and energy usage are just a few of the basics that should be coming into our vocabulary as citizens.

We should all be learning about composting at this point. Almost half of the food we buy gets thrown in the garbage, and almost one third of landfill space is taken up by uneaten food. This food does not decompose, as there's no air in the depths of a landfill (which is necessary to break things down), and eventually emits large amounts of methane into our already polluted air. Composting solves these problems.

One popular trend in California, and in some other states where people are likely to have large gardens, is worm composting. A lot of you may be just starting to get used to the idea of composting at all, much less with worms, but here are a few reasons you should consider worm composting over traditional methods.

You can compost all year:
Worm compost systems, properly maintained, have little to no smell. This allows them to be kept indoors which allows year-round composting, even in the harshest of climates.

Vermicompost: Worm castings are considered to be some of the best organic fertilizer in the world.

Economical: It's cheap to get started with worm composting. You can buy worms for a reasonable amount and often find worm bins for free or subsidized by the local government.

Fun: I know a lot of you may think that worms are gross, but really they can be a lot of fun, especially if you have young children. At first my own worms scared the beejeezus out of me, but eventually I realized that they were just tiny little animals. Taken one at a time, they were downright cute.

Learning about both worm composting and traditional composting is one step on the road to being landfill-free. As we all learn how we can reduce our environmental impact, we will also have an opportunity to take some joy from our new knowledge.

Good worming!

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