Saturday, October 11, 2008

Vermicompost

It has been one week since Nick and I finished our first vermicompost bin. This is his first and my second one. My family had a compost pile in the backyard growing up. I don't think we put any food scraps into it and all of the worms came naturally. My first vermicompost bin wasn't really mine it was purchased and set up by my awesome housemate Caitlin and I just contributed food scraps. We had some troubles with drosophila, rain, and pretty extreme solar heat. Sadly the bin was discontinued when we both moved on to new locations. 

I'm hoping not to kill any of our worms this time around. I think they're doing great so far. Nick and I work really hard not to produce a lot of trash. We believe we throw out about 3 pounds of waste a week. Everything else goes into the vermicompost or the recycling, which we have to take to work locations who actually have recycling, unlike our apartment complex. Our apartment complex houses 80 multi-family units. The trash is picked up at least three times a week. I know this because our unit faces the street where the 3 cubic yard dumpsters are picked up and hauled away at 7am. I have asked maintenance if we could get the free recycling bins and services from the city and their response was this,"I'm going to tell you like it is Lauren, it's just not a priority and it's probably not going to happen." I offered to point out some really good spots for the recycling bins and I was given the same answer. 

I just don't understand.

The property manager could save so much money from not having the trash picked up so often. The tenants who do care about recycling would be happy because they wouldn't have to drive all of their recycling to work. And the landfills will not be filled with items that could have been recycled. All they have to do is say yes. 

The last Los Angeles apartment Nick and I lived in said that they tried recycling before and it didn't work because people would put their trash in it. They decided to give it another go because I was a little more persistent and offered to hand out educational material for them. I didn't have to pass out any information and a lot of the residents used the recycling correctly. The management saw how well it was working out and they decided to implement the free recycling at their other properties. I think that the management really cared about the happiness and well being of their tenants. We also paid lots of money to live in a very small luxury style apartment. 

The place Nick and I live now is called luxury and we really like our loft but it's cheaper then our last apartment. Our new place is very cozy. Hence the inclusion of our happy vermicompost into our happy little home. 

Of course there's the dingy colored water. I'll save that for the next blog. 

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