The truth about our Trash
Problem
People want to align their lifestyles with environmentally sustainable practices, but what can they do? Many people recycle, but do not know that the US lacks recycling infrastructure. Very little of what people rinse, flatten and stack gets recycled. Yet big business puts recycling emblems on everything, fooling consumers into thinking that the consumption patterns they create aren't having much negative effect on the environment.
Consumption patterns drive solid waste management. Big money drives consumption. The numbers are staggering. Every ounce of plastic that has ever been created, or ever will be created, will be with us forever. Over the centuries, it will ever so slowly degrade, breaking into smaller and smaller pieces, entering the soil, the water and the air, invading the bodies of every living animal on Earth.
As living animals on Earth, humans eat. They eat plants and animals, and an industry has grown to supply food to the billions of people who grow hungry each day. Statistically, 40% of this food is never consumed. Some rots in the field. Some rots in the store. Some rots in the refrigerator, or "expires" on the shelf. Roughly 24% of landfill waste is food.
Burying organic material in a landfill is a bad idea. Think yard waste bans and buying big brown sacks to stuff with leaves and grass. Just like yard waste, food does not fare well in this environment. It requires oxygen to decompose, and after being dumped and compresses, and topped with more compressed garbage, that carton of moldy strawberries is breathless.
Bacteria that does not need oxygen to live works night and day in these landfills, and it takes over the decomposition of the strawberries. Problem is, this bacteria releases a gas called methane, and methane is extremely damaging to the atmosphere. Food waste is a key element in our changing climate.
So we are burying a gigantic amount of food each year, each and every one of us. That's the problem. That's also the opportunity. Offering an alternative to throwing food away, vermicomposting can become the feel-good recycling bin of the future, but a genuine one.
Solution
For the naturalist, the animal-lover, the science buff, creating a home-based food recycling system feels like an adventure, not a nasty chore. Opening a food recycling bin, and catching the quick retreat of a hundred worms as they recoil from the light, quickens the heart. It's science. It's nature. It's organic.
Food recycling is not for everyone. Sometimes the bin gets too wet and requires additional dry bedding to balance out. Sometimes fruit flies move in, and require additional dry bedding to be added to the top of the bin to keep them away from the food. Eventually, the bin gets full of worm castings, and worms need to be moved to a fresh home, the vermicastings added to the garden, and flower pots and lawn.
Food recycling is not for everyone, but it is for many. Annie's Home Farm offers Red Wiggler worms to stock household food recycling bins. We offer expertise in bin management. We raise, sort, and ship our own worms by hand, and we feel good about the impact our business is having on the future.