Our worm farm capacity is growing by leaps and bounds. We’ve added another innovation to our menagerie of wormeries. Like our earlier work converting old beds into wormeries, we’ve taken an abandoned 660 litre wheelie bin and transformed it into a continuous flow through wormery.
We’ve put together a short video explaining how its done, to hopefully inspire others.
The best part was the team effort involved in making this happen. Our volunteers all had different ideas on how to make this happen. We took our time, listened to all ideas, discussed them to determine the best approach. We wanted to keep the costs as low as possible so other people could follow our basic plan to build their own. All told, this wheelie bin worm farm probably cost £20 in parts.
The capacity is huge. We estimate that when we eventually build up the worm population, this bin will convert 7kg of food, garden and cardboard waste into high grade fertilizer every day! That’s 2.5 metrics tonnes per year of waste diverted from landfill and converted into soil enhancing worm castings. And because it’s plastic, it won’t rot and should give years of service.
We’re going with the continuous flow wormery solution because they are easy to run, less prone to problems and provide composting worms a stable environment to not only eat and produce castings but to breed and hatch the next generation. All we have to do is pour food into the top and keep them watered. They do the rest.
Our goal remains zero waste removed from the facilities where we operate. We would love rubbish pick up day to be a friendly wave from the bin men as they drive past our addresses. We’re also looking forward to enriching depleted soils with the amazing qualities of worm castings.
Now we’re on the hunt for more abandoned wheelie bins…
If you’d like any information or guidance on how to build your own wheelie bin wormeries in the UK, please get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.