No Waste

     We are working on creating a totally waste free farm.  I want to explain how we're doing it.  This may be highly boring, but it has been fun for us.

     We have a couple different sources of waste with our business.  No pun intended!!  Once source are the boxes all of our supplies are delivered in.  We receive cardboard boxes every week with bait supplies, reptile supplies and various other supplies.  We have a huge amount of boxes that would normally have to go to the landfill every week. 

     Another source of waste is the frass, poop, or spent bedding from the Superworms and Mealworms that we grow.  We also have piles of that weekly that we have to do something with, or we'll  get buried by it. 

    We found a solution to both issues.  We started shredding the cardboard for Red Worm/ European Night Crawler bedding and the worms seem to love it.  We also decided to take all of that spent bran and we piled it in large bins and wet it down.  The bins heated quickly and when they heat died down we had nice piles of peat moss-like material.  We added this to the Red Worm/European bedding and cardboard and have created some of the largest worms I've ever grown.  We have cut our waste down considerably.  I would imagine anyone at home could do the same buy shredding newspapers, cardboard and using human food scraps for bedding.  You can turn your garbage into fertilizer or big fat bait worms.  More to come.

Comments

[Sara Ann]

Just checkin' back to see if you'd gotten pissed off again!

I'll drop in often to see what you've tried....and to learn from your mistakes. (wink)

[karl]

I think your efforts to recycle these waste products are highly comendable! Not a thing wrong with keeping costs down, passing that on to the consumer and the business open, (as well as the obvious environmental benefits). Keep up the ethical work!!! We all know that pets seem to come last in priority amoung some official types, your efforts to ease our and the animals stress to a minimum helps more than might think. Thanks again!

[Russ]

We are also trying to eliminate as much waste on our goat farm as possible. We have large amounts of cardboard and newspaper. Does the colored ink in the newspaper and now in the cardboard (whole sides are colored in some cases) hurt red worms?