The Importance of Vermicomposting for Sustainability
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes (Unpublished)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016
Do you ever wonder about vermicompost? Me neither, barely knew what the word meant, so I looked it up. But it’s important, and especially because it’s a simple concept to swallow. Vermicompost: “composting with worms.”[i],[ii],[iii]
But wait, there’s more! It’s a lovely story of sustainability, and lust with Wormeo and Compostiet. And as with many of these narratives, I go to the substantial, authoritative source of Encyclopedia Britannica, and this time on worms, which states:
any of various unrelated invertebrate animals that typically have soft, slender, elongated bodies. Worms usually lack appendages…Worms are members of several invertebrate phyla, including Platyhelminthes (flatworms), Annelida (segmented worms), Nemertea (ribbon worms), Nematoda (roundworms, pinworms, etc.), Sipuncula (peanutworms), Echiura (spoonworms), Acanthocephala (spiny-headed worms), Pogonophora (beardworms), and Chaetognatha (arrowworms).[iv]
Phyla are basically the major subgroups of animals or a scientific means of classifying animals via the discipline of taxonomy that is devoted to this process or cataloguing life – the rest pretty much follows from this idea.[v],[vi],[vii]
And so that’s the groundwork, and the scientific framework of the currency of vermicomposting: worms. What kind of worms, and stuff, are needed – like the ingredient list in a recipe for proper composting?[viii]
You need worms, a container, and bedding. One of the basic means of composting is cold composting, or throwing things onto a pile and waiting for them to decompose, which natural fibres will do and synthetic or man-made fibres will not, where natural fibres count as animal and plant fibres.[ix],[x],[xi],[xii]
Cold composts are different than hot composting, and cold composts are slower at the process of decomposition of the relevant biodegradable stuff but they are easier to get going with those three basic parts – a bedding, a worm, and a container.[xiii],[xiv],[xv]
There can be discussions, and so on, about trade-offs between time spent and output of the eventual fertilizer post-decomposition of the animal or plant fibres. However, the basic concern remains about effort versus output.
Lower effort and lower output, a direct correspondence, for the cold composting; a greater effort and a greater output for the hot composting. Take your pick, the other bits will come from there.
If you’re in a lazy season, or don’t have heavy-lifting assistance to shovel the compost or whatever into a pile and do all of the fine work, then cold compost might be the one for you.
If not, and if time, then hot compost is the one for you, especially if you have a deadline for the need for fresh fertilizer for some vegetable plantation in the home garden.
Now, to the main course, as it were, the bedding, the container, and the worms. The bedding is simply the stuff on top of the ground from which the to-be composted material can then be placed for decomposition over time, which can newspapers, vegetable and fruit peels, leaves, so on, and so on.[xvi]
The container is the container, bit tautological, but true! Next, are the worms; so you’ve decided on the bedding, and the kind and style of composting, and the arrangement for the bedding and the compost, but next in the actual vermicomposting.
Well, that’s the sticky part. What kind of worm. Is it a common worm that is pervasively used because of it’s efficiency for human agriculture, or a bunch of different ones for specific tasks and for the breakdown of particular materials?
The answer is straightforward and two words: red worms, or red wigglers.[xvii] The great thing about them is their level of productivity within the soil because they can “swallow great quantities of organic material, digest it, extract its food value and expel the residue as worm castings.”[xviii]
And some of the basics about vermicomposting, one of the great uses for them, and highly relevant to the sustainability minded and ethically conscious of us around here at Trusted Clothes (and all of the great fellow writers, who’s stuff you should check out, seriously!)
I mean, there’s lots of great material out there to be composted, and this includes all of the natural fibres such as plant fibres – alpaca wool, angora wool, camel hair, cashmere, mohair, silk, and wool, and animal fibres – abaca, coir, cotton, flax, hemp, jute, ramie, and sisal.[xix]
And, I think one of its main benefits, is the increased capacity to compost at a faster rate and end up with fertilizer that is more nutrient-rich, which can be used to provide rich soil to grow plant fibres, for instance, or grow the crops that feed the animals that then go through dehairing. Each as part of the different harvesting processes for natural fibres. But, there’s lots of non-vermicompost methodologies, too.[xx],[xxi],[xxii]
So, to vermicompost or not to vermicompost, that is the question.[xxiii]
[i] Planet Natural. (2015). Using Worms.
[ii] Green Action Centre. (2016). Vermicomposting.
[iii] [TED-ed]. (2013, June 26). Vermicomposting: How worms can reduce our waste – Matthew Ross.
[iv] worm. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica.
[v] Encyclopedia of Life. (n.d.). Animal Phyla.
[vi] BBC. (2016). What is a phylum?.
[vii] Taxonomy (2016) states:
Taxonomy, in a broad sense, the science of classification, but more strictly the classification of living and extinct organisms—i.e., biological classification. The term is derived from the Greek taxis(“arrangement”) and nomos (“law”). Taxonomy is, therefore, the methodology and principles of systematic botany and zoology and sets up arrangements of the kinds of plants and animals in hierarchies of superior and subordinate groups.
taxonomy. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica.
[viii] solid-waste management (2016) states:
Another method of treating municipal solid waste is composting, a biological process in which the organic portion of refuse is allowed to decompose under carefully controlled conditions. Microbes metabolize the organic waste material and reduce its volume by as much as 50 percent. The stabilized product is called compost or humus. It resembles potting soil in texture and odour and may be used as a soil conditioner or mulch.
Composting offers a method of processing and recycling both garbage and sewage sludge in one operation. As more stringent environmental rules and siting constraints limit the use of solid-waste incineration and landfill options, the application of composting is likely to increase. The steps involved in the process include sorting and separating, size reduction, and digestion of the refuse.
solid-waste management. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica.
[ix] natural fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica.
[x] man-made fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica.
[xi] Wild Fibres. (2016, February 15). Animal Fibres.
[xii] Wild Fibres. (2016, February 15). Plant Fibres.
[xiii] Almanac. (2016). How to Compost: Hot and Cold Methods.
[xiv] Vegetable Gardener. (2009, February 10). Composting Hot or Cold.
[xv] Kitchen Gardeners International. (n.d.). Which is better: hot or cold composting?.
[xvi] Fong, J & Hewitt, P. (1996). Worm Composting Basics.
[xvii] Red Wigglers (2016) states:
The most common type of composting worm! As they feed, Red Wigglers (Eisenia foetida) swallow great quantities of organic material, digest it, extract its food value and expel the residue as worm castings which are very rich in nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and many micronutrients. Under ideal conditions, E. foetida can eat their body weight each day. They also reproduce rapidly, and are very tolerant of variations in growing conditions.
Planet Natural. (2016). Red Wigglers.
[xviii] Ibid.
[xix] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2009). Natural Fibres.
[xx] Planet Natural. (2015). Using Worms.
[xxi] Green Action Centre. (2016). Vermicomposting.
[xxii] [TED-ed]. (2013, June 26). Vermicomposting: How worms can reduce our waste – Matthew Ross.
[xxiii] The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (2016) states:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.–Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.
Shakespeare, S. (n.d.). The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
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