Earth Day aka "Green Love" 2008

Leafy Tree Pendant from OneElf



Earth Day’s fast approaching and I’m super excited. My ‘hug a tree’ shirt’s ready and waiting and I’m impatiently counting down the hours. Yes I’m a giant geek, but it’s the one day where spreading the green love is totally socially acceptable. Although I will still try and refrain from yelling at people who chuck plastic bottles in the trash; I will not refrain from rolling my eyes at people who look at me funny when I remove perfectly good rolls of wrapping paper from the trash.

It’s going to be fun. However since it is Earth Day I know everyone’s being berated with things like ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ and ‘turn the water off when you brush your teeth’. Important, yes, but I think there’s a bit of a bigger picture that gets missed in all that, so I’m going for something different. I’m not going to talk about it, at least not today. Today I’m talking about worms.

Yes, I’m finally writing a real entry about something, and yes it’s about worms. I happen to think they’re cute, most people don’t, but that’s not the point of this whole thing. The point is that they’re very useful little creatures.

They help aerate the soil and provide nutrients in forms more useful to plants. They also are quite useful in composting. Composting is important in so many ways from reducing the amount of trash that ends up in landfills to providing nutrients to plants that you grow. It can, however, be difficult for people who live in apartments or in houses with small or nonexistent yards.

If you're in the above group you can go the indoor composting route, invest in an indoor composting unit, or try bokashi (which is awesome if you’re looking for ways to compost meat and dairy products) or you can go the worm route.

Vermiculture, or composting with worms is something of interest to me; not only because I love worms but also because I hate throwing things out. Long before I found out that landfills produce methane, a greenhouse gas, I thought composting was cool because it took something you couldn’t use and turned it into something that you could. Worms it turns out are particularly good at this. Plus you can put together a bin for little to no cost.

First you’ve got to fine an empty bin, something the size of a dishpan and add bedding, worms, and a little bit of dirt. The worms you can get from your backyard by laying out a piece of wet cardboard overnight and harvesting the worms in the morning. You want the ones that live near the surface, not deep down in the dirt, so don’t start digging. Then all you’ve got to do is start feeding them.

Simple, yet effective. If you want some more information try a google search, or check out a couple of sites that I really like:

• Worm Composting with Earth 911
• Red Worms
• Vermicompost on Treehugger