Mar showing us their worms for sale!
Would you like some pet worms? My friends Chelo and Mar from the collective JAMA can teach you how to raise them. Using three stacked buckets, they won't take up much space at all!
Mar's research for her Master's degree thesis was about the management of solid waste in San Cristobal de Las Casas. In San Cristobal de Las Casas, the average person produces 1.2 kilos (2.6 pounds) of trash per day. This adds up to 670,000 kilos of trash every day! I did some googling and in the United States, we produce over 2 kilos (about 5 pounds) per person per day 😬.
A lot of this "trash" is organic waste that can be composted into a nutritious soil amendment rather than rotting in a landfill. In landfills there is so much waste all buried together that organic waste doesn't get any oxygen. In these conditions it releases greenhouse gases including methane and carbon dioxide.
While a lot of times academic research stays in essays and papers, Mar realized that this problem of solid waste from urban spaces is very connected to agrecological processes. Therefore, the collective JAMA started using the vertical worm compost (among many other projects) as a way to reduce urban waste and to convert that "waste" into compost for our plants and gardens. This closes the loop. A "closed loop system" is when our waste is managed in a way to reincorporate it back into the soil. In a "broken loop", our waste leaves the loop and creates waste and pollution in landfills, water sources, and cities.
Not everyone has space for a big compost pile in their urban home, but most people might have space for three stacked buckets of worms. Worms eat a lot! One worm eats its own weight's worth of food in one day. Therefore, they can eat our organic kitchen waste and convert it into nutritious compost.
How to make vertical worm compost with three stacked buckets
Chelo and Mar give this workshop to children and adults. The children were exploding with excitement to see the worms, and by the end of the workshop they could explain the process better than me. They were especially interested in the life cycle of worms!
In the pictures above you can see three stacked buckets. The bottom bucket has a screen or mesh netting overtop. Then the next bucket has holes punched in the bottom. This allows all of the juices from the worm compost to accumulate below in the bottom bucket. This liquid is a nutrient-rich fertilizer for the plants and soils as well. It's sometimes called "worm tea." Then the top bucket also has holes punched in the bottom so that the worms can move freely between the top two buckets and find their food. Finally, the top bucket is covered with a lid. You start adding organic waste to the top two buckets and the worms start eating, reproducing, and making compost.
It's important to add both green/wet and brown/dry materials so that there is a balance. This means kitchen and vegetable waste needs to also be balanced out with cardboard paper (toilet paper rolls, cardboard egg trays, other non-glossy paper, etc). It's best and faster if everything is cut or ripped into smaller pieces.
What to put in your worm compost?
All organic waste from your kitchen!
Dry materials like shredded cardboard or dry leaves
Manure but not too much because it can be too hot for the worms
What not to put in your worm compost?
Meat and bones
Processed or cooked food
Food with oil or seasonings
Too much of things that make the soil acidic like a lot of citric fruit, onion, or chile
Worm compost needs shade and humidity. But it also needs to be covered and not exposed to rain because the worms can drown. Chelo accidentally drowned her worms so mistakes happen even to the most experiences agroecologists! We can only learn by doing.
Urban gardens on the terrace
Mar has an incredible urban garden in their patios and terrace with pollinator plants, vegetables, flowers, and small trees. When I turned onto their street I immediately recognized their house from all of the beautiful vegetation. It makes you imagine how different urban spaces could be if we all planted more and used composting practices. In the bottom left picture I am holding a few calendula seeds that Mar picked off the flower in her garden and put in my hand and said,"Haz terrorismo ambiental." "Make environmental terrorism" hahah they like to spread seeds and add more biodiversity around urban spaces :)
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