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Making your life greener - one bite at a time.

Leftovers keep coming back to your dinner plate...We rely on natural resources for everything we do and have. This includes our food. We take materials from nature, use them, sometimes we change them, and then we dispose of what remains.

 Nature has one of the best methods of disposal. Organic matter, such as food and paper, is broken down through decomposition, a naturally occurring process involving bacteria.

The decomposed material is rich in nutrients and can be recycled to help other things grow. In this way, nature closes the loop: turning resources back into resources - wasting nothing.

Most food scraps and some waste paper can be recycled through composting. Compost worms help to speed up this process. They eat the bacteria that live on the organic scraps. The waste material they produce is called castings. It is rich in nutrients and can be used as fertiliser, either as a crumbly soil-like product, or through worm juice - a water-based solution that can be sprayed or poured onto soil. These fertilisers are organic.

You can use the compost or worm castings for your garden. You can turn tonight's lunch or dinner scraps into another meal if you grow your own vegetables, herbs or fruit.

As well as providing a rich fertiliser, composting redirects organic matter so it does not have to be transported to rubbish dumps or landfill.

Australia disposes of 620 kg of domestic waste per person each year. Over 95 per cent of solid waste is disposed of to landfill, of which construction and demolition of buildings contributes between 40 and 50 per cent. Landfill sites take up land that could be used for other purposes, including natural processes like providing habitat for different species.

Landfill sites also cost money to establish and to operate. Reducing organic waste to landfill also reduces greenhouse gases (methane) from rotting vegetation. If landfill sites are not managed well, they can cause environmental problems. If they are located a long way from the places that generate the waste, it also costs money and produces greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles to transport the waste to the site.

Sort your rubbish. Put the organic material out for composting. You can use a small bin in the kitchen and transfer this to a larger bin, as you need. Or you can take your scraps to the big bin after each meal.

If you live in a unit or townhouse, you can use a small composting bin, or buy a small, portable worm farm and feed the scraps to the worms.

Use worm castings and worm juice. These can be made with your own worm farm or you can buy them commercially.

To get the best from composting, you need to follow some simple rules. See the following page: www.ea.gov.au/education/facts/composting.html

About half the waste that goes into a garbage bin is food or garden waste. All those vegetable scraps, tea bags, coffee grounds along with your garden leaves and prunings can be composted into a rich garden fertilizer.

Recycling the household's organic waste into compost allows us to return badly needed organic matter to the soil. In this way, we participate in nature's cycle, and cut down on garbage going into burgeoning landfills.

What is worm composting?

Worm composting is using worms to recycle food scraps and other organic material into a valuable soil amendment called vermicompost, or worm compost. Worms eat food scraps, which become compost as they pass through the worm's body. Compost exits the worm through its' tail end. This compost can then be used to grow plants. To understand why vermicompost is good for plants, remember that the worms are eating nutrient-rich fruit and vegetable scraps, and turning them into nutrient-rich compost

Which worms to use?

Worms used in wormeries are not the usual garden variety but special species that thrive in compost, hence their name "compost worms". These special worms live in the top layers of the garden

Tiger worms, Indian Blues and Red worms are the main worms used in worm farming. They love rich moist rotting materials.

Worms eat anything that has once been living. They are nature's recyclers:

fruit & vegetable scraps
egg shells
tea leaves, bags + coffee grounds
small amounts of moist paper
vacuum cleaner dust
last week's floral arrangements + even hair clippings.

AVOID: citrus - lemons, oranges, onions + garlic

A container

You will need to get one or more suitable worm containers, which can be either recycled plastic, wood or metal. Use your imagination and recycle an old bath tub or wooden box, a plastic basin, bin, or crate. Worm farm containers can either be bought from your local hardware store or garden centre, or you can make your own out of recycled materials. Wooden containers provide good insulation, and because they are absorbent, excess moisture in the wormery may be less of a problem. Plastic containers are convenient but have a tendency to keep the compost too wet at times. Experiment and find out what works for you and your worms.

Bedding material
Worms require moist bedding in which to lie and lay their eggs. Shredded paper with a couple handfuls of soil is ideal.

Here is another way of building your own worm farm out of reused and recycled materials.

You will require:

Old carpet or sack if available (optional)
Three old phone books or some bricks
1 piece of corrugated iron 600 x 600 mm
3 or 4 car tyres of a similar size
35 newspapers (approx)
1 small container (to collect liquid)
Old onion sacks or shade cloth
Lots of tiger worms
1 close fitting lid (a piece of wood with a rock will do)

Operating instructions for a recycled tire worm farm

Place the corrugated iron on top of the telephone books / bricks - two books on one side and one on the other to make a slope.
Stack the tyres on top of the corrugated iron. Dig out a hollow for the container to collect the worm tea which runs off the iron.
Fill the bottom tyre with bedding material (shredded paper and some soil) and add the worms (250gms)
Feed regularly with kitchen scraps and keep the mixture moist to touch.
Keep the worms covered with newspaper, cardboard or carpet, then place the lid on top to prevent flies getting in.
Make sure the bedding for your worms is always moist - you may need to add extra water every two or three weeks in the summer, depending on how moist the scraps are that you feed them.
As the tyre stack fills up, this normally takes several months, you slide out the bottom tyre and empty the worm castings. The paper in the tyre will probably be full of worms and can be replaced as is, used in your garden or compost heap, or given to friends to start new worm farms.
The empty tyre is now ready to be re-used. Stuff it with fresh, moist newspaper and place on top of the tyre stack. The nutrients from your kitchen scraps are now available for you to use in your garden and the number of your worms will have increased.