It seems like every day I read that another town in the U.K. has started separating and composting its food waste. Yesterday, it was the Scottish town of Banff (in Aberdeenshire).
Here in the States, the good news trickles in less frequently. All the more reason to laud the launching of something like worm compost at North Carolina’s state capitol. On Tuesday, The North Carolina Legislative Building began feeding its food waste to worms in a bin just outside the capitol complex. Each day, 50 pounds of kitchen scraps and plate scrapings are fed to “red wigglers,” who can eat half their body weight in a day.
This “vermiculture” initiative is part of a wider effort to divert all of the Legislative Building’s food waste from landfills. In February, the capitol’s cafeteria began donating its edible leftovers to Raleigh’s food recovery experts, Inter-Faith Food Shuttle. By June, Brooks Contractor was collecting and composting the building’s inedible food waste, which totaled about 200 pounds every weekday.
For more on the topic, check out this impressive article written by a sharp, North Carolina writer.