You don’t need thousands of red wigglers to do this, we started with just a handful and they reproduced so much that we shared worms to get at least 16 households, a high school ag classroom, a couple of 4-H clubs, my egg farmer and a young agronomist in the composting business.  Well, not really “in business’, but we were able to expand the opportunity for individuals and families to divert food waste all over Iowa and beyond, 20 fold!

We now have two vermi-compost bins in the office.  The Super Snack Lady, our school nutrition educator, snagged a pickle bucket from a local restaurant and it became the  second one now residing in our volunteer coordinator’s office.

People ask if it smells.  No, unless we wait too long to put the scraps in the bin and they have started rot. Then I bury the really ripe pieces a little deeper so the worms will work on it right away.  But, I have to tell you, the harvested compost smells SWEET and FRESH! Our little friends prefer to be ‘incognito’, so we cover them with about 3 inches of shredded office paper and they do their work quietly and quickly each week without fanfare. The perfect environment is 55-75 degrees fairenheit, dark and moist with a 50-50 mix of green and brown goods.  The green goods are high in nitrogen and include things like avocado skins and pulp, banana peels, apple cores, kiwi and broccoli trimmings.  The brown ingredients are carbon based and include coffee grounds, tea bags, paper towels and that sort of thing. There are some things that do not compost well - meat, dairy, salad dressing and other fats.  We do, however, add clean, crushed egg shells about monthly for some calcium to the mix and to keep the pH balanced.

How much food waste does your household throw into the garbage can each week? Would you consider composting it? Tell us about it  at http://blogs.extension.iastate.edu/isuecofamily/

Kristi

I was gently reassured that the dinnerware was compostable so I breathed a sigh of relief, opened another plastic bag to collect them in,  before launching into a thought process of how they would get composted. My 20 questions started like this: If they are in a plastic trash bag will they breakdown in the landfill? Do they have to be put out with the yard waste to go to the municipal composting process? Will the yard waste be rejected at curbside if it has “paper” products in it? Does the office building we are in have yard waste pickup? Can the compostable dinnerware go in the cardboard recycling bin - if it has remnants of salad dressing or pizza sauce on it? I was told that the pizza boxes could not be recycled because they had contained food.

At my son’s graduation party in 2005, I ordered compostable dinnerware – plates, napkins, forks, spoons from California that were made from corn grown in Iowa. There was nothing like that at my local grocery store then. The concept of composting the plates and utensils seemed interesting, they were made with locally grown corn  and more green than plastic plates and silverware for our celebration. However, we collected it all in big garbage cans and it went to the landfill with the rest of our trash.  That didn’t seem quite right, but I was hopeful, thinking that since someone had THOUGHT of and CREATED compostable dinnerwear, there must be a way to dispose of it.  Just in case, I had sorted out some of the plates and spoons to put in my garden compost pile to see what happened.  I learned that compostable dinnerware still looks like it did when I put it in the compost bin months later, because my home compost bin does not create the heat needed to breakdown these products. Rats. I’m guessing the stuff we sent in the plastic garbage bags hasn’t changed either – unless the black plastic bags they were in generated enough heat to break them down. And turn them into methane in the landfill.

Fast Forward to 2012.  Has anything changed? Well, there are more compostable products on the shelves, but there is still not a system to compost these products. I am trying these newer compostable products in my vermi-compost bin this time – some intact, some cut into pieces, some filled with banana peels and apple cores.  I will let you know what I find in a few months.

What do you assume happens to your waste? Look up the phone number to your landfill and ask them about compostable dinnerware, food waste and methane. Let me know what you find out.

Kristi Cooper

It looks like it is time to harvest compost again!  The bin is really full which contributed to the moisture problem.  I think I will take the compost bin to my next Nature Explore workshop www.natureexplore.org  and let participants ( kids and adults) try their hand at vermi-composting and take some worms home to start their own bin. If you live in eastern Iowa and would like to get started with a donation from one of my vermi-compost bins, give me a shout! I’m not in the business to ship, so you will have to pick them up.  I can get them to Cedar Rapids or Iowa City.  I will even let you harvest if you want to.  It is a relaxing and messy process so you don’t want to be in a hurry. If not, I am glad to do it and get a supply of  red wigglers for you to pick up.  I just ask that you study up, get your bin ready so they have a good home to go to.  Send me an email kcoop@iastate.edu and I will send you some good reading material for your preparation!

Remember these are for INDOOR composting.  The red wigglers don’t do so well outdoors.  There are other ways to compost your waste outdoors.

I added my last batch of compost tea (the juice that seeps out of the bottom of the container) to the hybiscus tree in the house and she is flowering like CRAZY now!  I start my garden seeds in the castings and they germinate VERY quickly!  Food waste in the trash can creates methane in the landfill.  But it creates sweet smelling soil in the compost bin!  How will you turn fruit & vegetable waste into a resource this spring?

Kristi Cooper

What does your workplace do to be more  respectful of the environment?

Kristi Coooper