IKEA Gets Worms
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 11.17.05
A while back Roger Gray wrote to us about a project he’s been involved with called ‘Red Tag’, which we’ll get to in an upcoming post. Anyhow, by the time we got around to visiting Roger’s EasyGreen blog we discovered he also had a lovely story about IKEA getting into vermiculture. We talked about their environmental policies back here. Now it seems IKEA, the state of llinois and New Horizon Organics, have got together for a composting trial, to feed worms the food waste from an IKEA store restaurant. The wormfarms are mobile, being created in two trucks, and parked in the loading dock. If the trials are successful, it will help IKEA move from 70% effective recycling, to their goal of 90%.
What happens to the nutrient rich worm castings from the vermicomposting operation is not immediately clear, but it makes great fertiliser, so we assume it get put to good use. (NB: We borrowed the squirmy wormy picture from Ocean Arks, who also offer worm farming set ups. Years ago they pioneered the concept of a ‘Living Machine’, which we’ve previously noted here.)
This is amazing! I am so happy that people are finally starting to think about the outcome of their waste products. If large companies such as IKEA can work to reduce their waste, think what the average household would be able to do. Could companies use this truck system in cities? A sort of portable compost idea?