Let The Worms Eat Your Organic Waste - Vermicomposting: David Witzeneder (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of David Witzeneder’s talk titled “Let The Worms Eat Your Organic Waste – Vermicomposting” at TEDxDonauinsel 2017 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

The Time We Spend Carrying Waste

You face this situation every few days: a size of a plastic bag waiting somewhere close to your door, a house, usually a bit stinky and not the most joyful activity to bring into the communal bin. Out of curiosity, I roughly calculated the time we spend carrying waste in our life, and I was shocked by the result. Supposing that the average person lives 80 years and starts carrying waste with the age of 18, it is 2,500 hours. To give you an idea, 2,000 hours is the average time we spend at the full-time job in one year, so it is really a lot of time.

And it doesn’t stop there. Every day, thousands of trucks are on the road to drive from my house to your house in order to get at our waste bin. Garbage collectors spending hours and hours of their lifetime to get our bin, empty it in the truck to finally dump it on a landfill or burn it in a power plant. This little plastic bag full with waste, which seems to be so little, costs us so much energy, lifetime and money.

It should be possible to reduce it, to reduce it, at least half of it. That was my question, and I tried it so hard to find out a way. It’s not that easy, and maybe somebody would ask, “But how should it be possible?”

Everything is packed in plastic, even vegetables and fruits. When I receive my parcel from Amazon, it’s packed in cardboard. I’m reading a daily newspaper, which has several hundred pages of paper per week, and when I’m cooking, I have a lot of organic waste, which starts to smell.

Analyzing Our Waste

You’re completely right. We generate a lot of waste and it’s OK to read a daily newspaper or to cook at home. However, when we analyze our waste, we can identify some very interesting facts. Each person in Europe produces around 500 kilograms of waste, and it can be categorized in following groups: 20% is paper and cardboard, 30% is organic food scraps, like from fruits, vegetables or leftovers, 15% is plastic and 35% is mixed, like cans, glass, electronic devices.

The first two groups, paper, cardboard and organic food scraps, are biodegradable. In case of plastic, only bioplastics have the same characteristic. Why a material is biodegradable can be found in the molecular structure. Mainly they are based on organic components, which can be composed by natural processes.

Introducing the Redworm

Now, I proudly present you the little animals who will help us to deal with all our waste, save us a lot of time and, by the way, produce something incredible. Their scientific name is Isainia foetida, better known as redworm, compostworm and earthworm.

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Their ability is that they love to eat organic waste. They love it so much that they can eat up half of their body weight every day, and even more fascinating, at least for me, is what comes out of the end of the worm. They shit black gold – black gold, not as crude oil, but as fertile soil, which has already a higher price than petrol.

The Worm Box

But what has that to do with my little plastic bag full of waste? Compostworms live, as it is already stated, in compost heaps, somewhere in the countryside, but some clever people started to construct boxes where compostworms can live inside. So they are specially designed for them. So it is like a compost heap with worms, isolated in a box.

This box is then called worm box and you can put it wherever you want. Four years ago, I started my first worm box. Here is a picture – very simple, out of wood. I bought 1000 worms online and they came by post. We had it in our flat, next to the kitchen table, actually there where we produced our organic food waste. We were able to put all our organic waste plus a bit of cardboard and paper inside.

You need to know that we were four vegetarians who were cooking at least one or two times per day at home, so we really had a lot, a lot of food. And every day we were impressed how much they can eat.

Experimenting with the Worm Box

What I am trying to tell you here, I made a little experiment. I removed a wall from my worm box and replaced it with glass, so I was able to have a look what was going on inside. I filled up the box with organic food scraps, paper and cardboard, added around 700 worms and then I observed it for the next few weeks. I took a picture every few days.

Here are the results: This is day zero, so you can see the banana peels from salad, watermelon and paper. This picture is day seven. Day 14, so you also can see the worms. And then day 21, nearly everything decomposed and transformed into black soil. I was amazed.

And I was even amazed by another thing. I had a toothbrush out of plastic, out of bioplastic and I added it to my worm box. I checked it every month and it became thinner and thinner. After three months, I could not find even a single part of it again.

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Then I realized the huge potential my little pets have with dealing with all our waste. Now they can eat already half of our waste and when it gets replaced by bioplastic, which will happen sooner or later, they can even eat more waste. So what you can see here could be one of the most influencing biological technologies of this century, but I guess before I go on, many questions rose in your head, so I will try to answer them.

Common Questions about Worm Boxes

Yeah.

First question. Yeah. First question: “Do the worms come out of the box at night?” Yes, if you don’t feed them well, they get out of the box and raid your fridge. No, I’m joking. The worms prefer to stay inside because it’s humid, dark and full of waste.

“I’m sure this box is smelly.” No, the box smells like soil from a forest, and when the box is closed, you don’t even smell the forest. The reason is because of the available oxygen and the microorganisms who are immediately starting to decompose the organic matter. If in nature something smells bad, something is wrong.

“But do I need to buy new worms after some time?” No, the worms reproduce themselves in the box until they reach the maximum density. When they recognize that there are too many, they stop to reproduce and stay like this.

“But what should I do when the box is full?” Easy, you remove the worm castings and use it for your plants. Or if you don’t have plants, you can give it to friends or you give it to a community garden. Farmers and scientists found out that worm compost is one of the best ways how to provide plants with what they need.

And maybe you’re also asking, “How can I separate the worms from the compost?” There are some very interesting techniques how to do it.

“So it is like a garbage bin where I can throw everything inside?” Unfortunately not. My team and I are doing research to make it as easy to use as possible, but you need to know that you’re dealing with animals and they need a little bit of attention. So for example, they are vegan and they don’t like so much spicy food, but those things you catch up within a few weeks and when you’re reading the instructions.

Potential Impact on Cities

So another question: “What does it mean for Vienna, like a city with 1.8 million inhabitants?” Vienna does already a great job in separating waste. Ah, good that you ask. I wrote my thesis about this topic and I found out that we still could reduce 172 million kilograms of waste every year. To give you an idea, that’s like 16,000 trucks every year and around 20 to 40 trucks per day driving less on the streets in Vienna – only in Vienna. What do you think?

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Ah, sounds great, but to be honest, I would not put worms into my flat. I’m disgusted by them and I’m sure many other people as well. I understand your concern and there are many people who have the same opinion like you. I made a survey on the street asking people. The result was that around half of the people would accept to have a warm box at home, and I guess here in the audience with so many open-minded people, it is even higher.

Now imagine how it would be for other cities in the world. Millions of tons of waste not dumped or burned somewhere, thousands of trucks driving less on the road and an undefinable amount of time saved for everybody out of us.

A Vision for the Future

My vision is that one day everybody has a warm box at home, like having a fridge integrated in the kitchen, well-designed and easy to use, so that everybody can decompose his or her waste in a decentralized way, reuse the compost you get for your plants and enjoy funny pets. So you can start on your own. Usually TED Talks listeners are very open-minded people who love ideas, pioneers and change-makers.

There are instructions on the web how to build a warm box, and it’s a really nice activity with friends or with children. Or you buy a ready-to-use box online. There are many creative people who figured out some really nice ways how to do warm composting. For example, very simple, just in a plastic bucket. Or the fancier version is like a warm seat, so it’s out of wood, with seating and wheels, so you can move around in your flat. Or in a specially-designed bin called Hungrybin, which is used in restaurants and can eat up to two kilos of organic waste per day.

So my last sentence: It is up to you if you want to be part of those pioneers, decomposing waste in a much simpler way, producing something incredible, being happy with your new lovely pets and by the way, carry less waste to the communal bin. Thank you.

Let The Worms Eat Your Organic Waste – Vermicomposting: David Witzeneder (Transcript)