By Monique Muise
For Ray Cooper, no kitchen is complete without a bucket of worms.
Yes, worms.
Cooper is the owner of the Worm Factory, a business located in Westport that sells supplies and kits for vermicomposting, or composting using garden-variety earthworms.
“We have massive amounts of worm piles on our farm,” Cooper says. “So whenever you need fertilizer, there it is!”
Vermicomposting involves placing food scraps into a container, which is filled with soil and worms. The worms will eat and then expel organic waste, leaving a natural fertilizer behind, which can be used in the garden. It’s simple and environmentally friendly and Cooper says the idea is appealing to many people.
He receives about eight orders a week and many of his orders come from teachers looking for a fun classroom project.
“The schools are getting on board, so we’re busy in September and October at the start of the semester,” Cooper says. “There’s also a spring market because people are buying compost worms for their outdoor piles.”
Home composting is one of the few options for Ottawa residents who want to keep their organic food waste out of landfills. Though the City of Ottawa launched a trial curbside organic waste, or green bin, collection project in 2001, it took until October 10 of this year for council to give the green light to a city-wide green bin program, which will take effect in March 2009.
Other Canadian cities including Halifax, Toronto and Edmonton have had curbside organic waste collection for years.
With green bins still more than a year away more Ottawa residents are turning to other environmentally sound ways to dispose of food waste, says Jennie Stratton, an employee at the Arbour Environmental Shoppe on Bank Street.
According to Stratton, the constant stream of customers anxious to compost is a sign that people are becoming aware of the amount of food waste they produce.
“There’s been a lot of environmental concern expressed in the media lately,” she says. “I think people are perhaps wanting to make a shift from the way they were brought up to more environmentally conscious ways of living.”
Coun. Diane Holmes has been pushing for municipal green bins in Ottawa for years, but has been met with opposition from city councillors who insist such a program would be too expensive.
“The majority of council was not interested,” Holmes says. “This council has not been terribly environmentally conscious. Unlike every other city in Ontario, they have only been interested in having a zero per cent tax increase.”
The organics collection program will cost the city $13 million per year, or about $34 per household.
Holmes says the program finally got off the ground when councillors learned municipal landfills would reach capacity within a few years. She says that the green bin program will make it unnecessary for the city to purchase new landfill sites, actually saving taxpayers more money in the end.
Stratton agrees that the program has been a long time coming.
“We send all that food to the dump,” she says. “It’s not going to disappear. It’s going to get covered in plastic and just take up space.”
Back on his farm in Westport, Ray Cooper is not worried about the effect the green bin program might have on business at the Worm Factory. He says there will still be a demand for at-home composting because the new organics collection will not extend to multi-residential housing such as apartment buildings or condominiums.
Holmes says that restaurants and businesses will also be excluded, but will eventually be incorporated into the program.
“It’s always difficult when a new idea comes along,” she says. “I’m very pleased that we’re finally getting there.”