The Wormery

Worms. We have created the new collective noun for them, Waynes. They are also known as a bed, bunch, clat, clew, knot, squirm or wriggle!. Ours though are ‘Waynes’. And we’ve got the Waynes, to help in the garden and kitchen. Specifically with breaking down the veg waste we generate, stopping it going in to landfill and being plant based, we generate a lot.

Ideally we would have liked to have used the wormery aka ‘Waynes World’, in conjunction with a traditional compost patch. The previous moorers were lambasted for putting up bird feeders by the other boaters, as they not only encouraged the beautiful birds, they also encouraged rats! So as you can imagine, placing our food scraps out in the open would have gone down like a lead balloon. Our solution is , Waynes World. compact, covered and highly efficient in breaking down the food into useable compost and liquid feed.

Some scary facts regarding food waste in the UK

It is estimated that over 8 million people in the UK are struggling to afford to eat, yet UK households throw away around 7 million tonnes food every year.
The average UK household throws away 20% of all food purchased.
This equates to around £700 per household in food waste – an annual utility bill.
Of the 7 million tonnes thrown away, 250,000 tonnes is perfectly edible and could be used to make up to 650 million meals for those in need.
The average person throws away 74kg of food waste each year, the weight of over 1000 banana skins.
Most of the food that ends up in landfills could be recycled to make animal feed, or even energy by converting the gas it releases into electricity and heat.
At least 50% of food waste could be composted.
Waste cooking oil is one of the most common causes of water pollution.
1 litre of used cooking oil can pollute up to 1 million litres of water drinking water.
We throw away 1.4 million untouched bananas every day.
20 million slices of bread every day – in the UK.
In the landfill, food waste releases methane, a damaging greenhouse gas.
We can cut our CO2 emissions and reduce our carbon footprint by up to 25% by simply recycling or composting our food waste.
It is estimated that we waste more than 30% of all food produced globally.
We use 25% of the worlds fresh water supply to grow food that we will send to the landfill.

The big one that is applicable for us in this, frankly, shocking list of facts (courtesy of https://www.recycling bins.co.uk/recycling-facts/) is that At least 50% of food waste could be composted. Id suggest that it was even higher for us. Which has led us to Waynes World. It seems the absolute perfect solution. The only doubt I have is whether the, Waynes will be able to keep up!

The Waynes themselves. These are no ordinary worms. Specifically for a composting wormery there are two types of worm, Tiger and European Nightcrawler! Both of which sound very intimidating but will become your best composting friends. These breeds are used as they are surface dwelling worms, our common garden variety are burrowers and therefore no good for life in a wormery, as the worms need to travel up through the trays chasing the food that you put in.

So what will be able to compost? Vegetables, Fruits, Coffee, Tea leaves, Bread, Rice, Pasta, Flowers, Cereals, Cakes, Cardboard and Paper. Its as if they have been created specifically for two vegan artists living an alternative lifestyle on a narrowboat who love cake!! We will be investing in a large kilner type jar and chopping our food waste into it, to accelorate the composting process.

The investment in this system is not just to avoid filling landfill with waste food. It will also be creating super enriched Waynes World Liquid known as Leachate (worm poo) that becomes super charged with nutrients and therefore makes an excellent plant feed ( 1 part feed to 10 parts water). Also created is Vermicompost, this is the compost that is produced by the Waynes, it is very high in nutrients containing 10,000 times the amount of bacteria and microbes than normal compost has and is high in phosphates, nitrogen and potassium.

Our next task is to create a cover for the Waynes. They are happy between 5-25 degrees, so we have probably another month before we need to keep them covered. Failing that I can always bring them into the shed if need be.

We got the whole kit, including wormery, coir, feed and worms from the UK company Worm City who supplied everything as promised. Assembly was easy and the booklet enclosed had loads of good information about the worms as well as the building instructions…

We will of course keep you up to date on the Waynes through our continuing end of garden mooring series on YouTube.

Take care, Stay Afloat and Love Yourself xxx