Welcome to the new Leafy Thoughts column! The new author has a few more years until graduating, and a guilty conscience for not doing more to minimize environmental damage. And so I have started the transformation from city-slicker to filthy hippy. I crossed that line when I started making my own deodorant.
It’s funny, but also a little sad, that really simple things like sniffling into a collection of cloth handkerchiefs are met with such strong resistance. Asking for your to-go pad thai in the Tupperware you brought with you is greeted with such bewilderment, and on more than one occasion I’ve been told I can’t use my own containers at certain bulk retailers; it must be in their store-brand plastic bags. One can try their best to avoid packaging waste altogether, but our disposable culture makes that far more difficult than it should be. Even when you’ve successfully carried your groceries home in a collection of Mason jars, canvas bags, and Tupperware, the kitchen garbage bin still sits full of carrot peelings, apple cores, and all the other junk that can’t be recycled, eaten, or otherwise used up.
The ultimate goal is to generate zero waste, but it’s going to be a while before that will be feasible. The easiest way to start small, like figuring out what to do with carrot peelings and egg shells besides throwing them in the garbage. If you, like me, live in a 6th floor apartment in a building with no organic waste collection, it’s not so easy to start a compost heap.
There has always been a solution to this, vermicomposting, but I avoided it because of the vermi part of that composting. Essentially, it’s a box full of soil, worms, and food scraps. It doesn’t stink, the worms eat the scraps, poop out top-quality compost, and your garbage sits devoid of food scraps. Unfortunately, this involves having to acquire and touch earthworms, which is an irrational phobia of many people—including myself.
After months of looking for any other solutions to apartment composting, I went and ordered worms anyway. I wasn’t going to die because of touching a worm, and reading about the insane amount of pollutants from landfills definitely helped guilt me into getting over it. $15 and 80 red wigglers later, I had an apartment composting system. Making a vermicomposting bin is simple; you get some sturdy container, punch air holes in the lid for ventilation, put down a layer of paper scraps like cardboard and newspaper, add organic waste, more shredded paper, then move your slimy new friends into the bin, spray a bit a water over the surface, and leave it alone. Maybe spray more water every few days if the air is very dry. That’s it. After a few weeks, you can begin to sift out the castings.
Like toddlers, worms are picky eaters, so they won’t eat everything you put into their bin. The great oracle of the Internet has said they’re not huge fans of ginger, onions, food that’s too big (tear it into smaller chunks,) or food that’s too warm/cold (should be approximately room temperature; no boiling hot tea bags or freezer-burned pierogi.) There is also a variety of foods that will kill your worms, citrus fruit being the most commonly cited, (one reliable-looking blog said that the limonene in the peels is what does it,) and the second being a worm bin with too many acidic additions—like coffee grounds.
Maintaining it is honestly even less work than taking out the garbage every other week—it doesn’t mould as quickly, doesn’t smell bad, and no gross garbage juice accumulates in the bottom of the container. There’s a list on my fridge that’s titled “Worm Bin: Yes/No” with a super-complex two column system of items that can and cannot be composted, highlighted correspondingly in green and red. Worms don’t like too much acid, fatty/oily stuff isn’t great for them, and dairy/meats tend to attract rodents and other pests, but they’re not toxic to the worms and in moderation should be fine.
This total endeavour cost me less than $20. I didn’t die when I had to touch the worms, and now they don’t freak me out anymore. As much. The amount of food waste from my kitchen has gone down by a drastic amount, and the worm bin means not having to wash gross garbage-juice from the bottom of the bin. The worms are happy, I’m happy, and my houseplants are happy with the compost.
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