Worm farm sets sights on adding weed waste to worm food menu - The GrowthOp

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 07:35 AM PST

Waste not, want not.

An Oklahoma business has come up with what it sees as a creative and ecologically friendly way to dispose of unsaleable medical cannabis: let the worms have at it.

Green Leaf Recycling in Muldrow, Okla. already uses earthworms to convert trash into premium-grade fertilizer, but the company is now hoping to add weed to the worms' waste-filled menu.

"What we want to do is actually reclaim it and reuse it," owner Shawn Cowan told 4029 News.

The operation consists of a former skating rink now filled with giant vats. Inside of these reside thousands of earthworms, more than 2 million when the facility is at full capacity, and although the wriggly residents currently chow down on waste like cardboard and old newspapers, Cowan's plans include adding a big dose of bad bud to the mix.

"When it (cannabis) fails the testing, then it must go to a licensed waste disposal facility," noted Cowan, who hopes his enterprise could qualify to get the rejects.

"Everything that we put into these vats is worm food. Once you dig down into it, you'll see where the worms are actually doing their work of eating," he noted.

Cowan has started the process of obtaining a permit from the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, and hopes to gain the state agency's approval within the next few months. If that pans out, his goal is to sell weed-enhanced worm castings in time for this coming April.

"Then, we'll go in and harvest all the castings, which is the worm poop, and then we'll bag that up to sale to the gardener's, greenhouses, anybody that wants to buy it," Cowan explained.

"It actually has living microorganisms in it that the plant feeds off of and when the plant has the right nutrients to draw from, no matter what plant it is, it'll fruit more and be a lot better taste. The worm castings alone will sell for $2 to $3 a pound."

No word on how they worms will react to their newfound weed-based diet, but if the surge in popularity of cannabis-infused edibles is any indication, it's likely they'll be blissfully munching on rotten reefer in the months to come.

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'FarmHer Donna's' worms are eating your sandwich scraps and pooping out nutrients. How Green Bay area businesses are going 'zero waste.' - Green Bay Press Gazette

Posted: 20 Feb 2020 12:00 AM PST

Donna Yost is helping Green Bay-area businesses that want to be more environmentally friendly by using their food waste to make compost Green Bay Press Gazette

DE PERE - Every three days, Donna Yost and Karl Fugere make the 60-mile trek from the Crivitz area south to the back alleys of Brown County.

They turn their truck, small by today's standards, off Pine Street in downtown Green Bay and find what they're searching for: plastic buckets.

They find two around back of Glas Coffeehouse, a few more behind Kavarna and more than a dozen waiting for them at Luna Cafe. There are more waiting at Great Harvest Bread and Luna's Bellevue cafe. The full ones weigh more than 40 pounds.

Inside the buckets: egg shells. Spent coffee grounds. Crusts of bread. Food scraps and byproducts from making your scone, your loaf of Oregon Herb bread or the Tobysaurus Rex egg and bagel sandwich.

Yost, who goes by "FarmHer Donna," and Fugere aren't dumpster diving, though. It's more like helping a half-dozen businesses practice what could be called dumpster avoidance. The pair have collected tons of food waste since they started the pilot project in August that otherwise would have ended up in a landfill.

Instead the waste is hauled up to their organic farm near Crivitz, where it is added to long rows of compost filled with hundreds of thousands of worms. The worms eat the food, poop it out and the resulting soil-compost-poop mix provides a nutrient-rich medium for raising crops. They even collect the water they use to clean the buckets for irrigation.

FarmHer Donna has been farming since she dug in her grandmother's two-acre plot in Appalachia as a child. She moved around different parts of the country, learning farming in different soil conditions before moving to the Crivitz area in 2010.

"It's about working with the land, understanding it," she said.

She met Fugere and moved onto his 40-acre plot of woods and farmland a few years ago and has spent the years since cleaning and prepping the soil for organic, agricultural use. The first year, she brought an acre online. This summer, she said, there will be four acres for organic agriculture.

In fall, she took over Vermicopia LLC, a small-scale operation that uses worms for composting.

"I want to be out there helping," she said. "This is all a part of my mapping out and understanding the food system in the area. I want to find out, 'How can I best insert myself to create positive change in the food system?'"

She said the food waste pickup project has helped businesses like Glas and Great Harvest further embrace what is known as the "zero waste" movement. It enhances the call to "reduce, reuse and recycle" with practical ideas to curtail waste and increase recognition of the economic impact consumers can bring to bear on industries.

"Any step is a good step," FarmHer Donna said. "At first, 'going green' was a novelty idea. But every time it happens — like with compostable straws — it makes a difference. It's not such a crazy idea anymore, and businesses are seeing the cost savings."

Zero waste's 'secret weapon'

Far from crazy, new research shows it has become a major policy priority alongside jobs and the economy, according to a Feb. 13 Pew Research Center survey. It found 64% of Americans surveyed said the environment should be a top policy priority, with 52% citing climate change, specifically — higher than jobs (49%) and just lower than the economy (67%).

About the only thing zero waste proponents want to throw in the trash is the 20th century "linear" model of production and consumption. Under that model, companies extracted resources, used them to manufacture products, and added layers of packaging for distribution to consumers who would toss it all when they were done.

Zero waste efforts aim to put a significant dent in the nearly 270 million tons of waste Americans generate each year — roughly 4 pounds per person per day, according to data the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency collects.

A look at how you can cut down on food waste and save money.

While the amount of waste being diverted from landfills has increased from just over 46% in 2010 to nearly 48% in 2017, EPA figures show the overall amount of waste going to landfills is still on the rise.

Proponents want to alleviate the perception that the massive global system is too big for an individual to change. Instead, they want to encourage people to take small steps to reduce consumption and waste. Together, by focusing on their individual waste, people can begin to change behaviors and, over time, environmental outcomes.

"The conscious consumer is our secret weapon. If we are conscious consumers, we have the power to change the world," said Brent Felchlin, Great Harvest Bread owner. "The supply chain follows your dollar, wherever you put it."

Shops like Sweet Willow Herbal Co-op want to use their buying power to develop a "circular" model where farmers, manufacturers and consumers work together to support companies' use of more sustainable packaging, farmers who grow organic crops and businesses that adopt efforts to reuse products.

"The linear model ends up with more waste in landfills," Sweet Willow owner Heather Herdman said. "The circular model ends up with more waste in compost piles, recycling bins and organic farms."

There is no right or wrong first step you can take when it comes to adopting zero waste practices. Instead, Herdman encouraged businesses and consumers to find something they feel comfortable doing and start building better habits.

Sweet Willow in De Pere sells organic herbs, teas and body products while avoiding plastic packaging. Green Bay Press Gazette

Here are a few ideas to get started:

Compost your organic material: Grab a 5-gallon bucket and divert food scraps and leftovers from the trash can to the compost pile. Companies from trash-bag maker Glad to Good Housekeeping offer tips and details to create your own compost pile at home. Herdman said venues large (St. Norbert College's dining hall) and small (Glas) do this to keep organic materials from landfills.
Challenge businesses or suppliers: Herdman said it never hurts to ask a business owner — or, if you're a business, a supplier — if they have alternate packaging available or can send products "naked," aka without packaging. She said it has led to her finding soap for sale in glass bottles rather than plastic and finding a deodorant that comes in a compostable tube rather than a plastic one.
Ditch single-use plastics: Along with reusable grocery bags, bring a reusable water bottle with you rather than grabbing a new bottle from the fridge. Put a coffee mug in your car, too: At Luna in De Pere, owner Mark Patel said customers who bring their own mugs get a quarter off, as well as 50 cents off the cost of coffee grounds if they bring their own bag. Some grocery stores reward their customers with small discounts for bringing their own bags, too.
Do it yourself: You can make a wide variety of household items yourself from bulk materials or just purchase them in bulk and reuse the dispensers/containers you already have.
Repurpose: There is no shortage of guides and tips you can find with a search like "zero waste ideas." There's bound to be a few tips or ideas that will apply to you or your business.
Have a conversation: New customers at Sweet Willow are often a little confused by Herdman charging 25 cents for a shopping bag. She said that moment where customers wonder "why?" is the chance to share a bit of information and encourage people to think about what they can do.

"It starts with the conversation: 'What are you seeing? What needs to change?'" Herdman said. "We don't have the answer. We want to start the conversation about how we can be more responsible."

Patel said the response from customers, employees and suppliers to Luna's efforts to adopt zero waste ideas has been encouraging.

"From day one, we always collected our coffee grounds. Zero waste was always part of our culture," he said. "You feel a responsibility to do it, and more customers and employees are asking me to do it."

Patel said the amount of food waste collected — diverted from landfills and into the bellies of FarmHer Donna's worms — still surprises him.

"We fill about three trash cans now," Patel said. "Places our size would normally fill a dumpster."

Herdman and her partner, Mary Radue, implemented several zero waste practices when they opened the Sweet Willow Herbal Coop on Main Avenue in downtown De Pere in late 2019. Beyond shopping bags, Herdman and Radue said they encourage customers to bring their own bottles or jars in when they need more natural beauty products, bulk herbs and teas.

Herdman said the shop, which proclaims its adherence to zero waste principles on storefront windows, is equal parts shop and school.

"We can show people there's a different way of doing things," Herdman said. "We do a lot of education with consumers. At first, charging a quarter for a bag was confusing. Now, many of them bring their own. The more we can give them a different way of doing or seeing things, the more they will embrace those behaviors here and elsewhere."

Great Harvest owner Brent Felchlin said it's about embracing small acts and changes. At the George Street bread shop, he said, employees suggested ideas to cut down on the volume of packaging used and waste generated.

"One huge act won't save our planet," Felchlin said. "It's many, many small acts and individuals taking responsibility to be good stewards, to see the climate crisis and to think about how bad it is to consume how much we do."

Felchlin said he's always believed in being sustainable and consuming as little as possible, but added he could not have reduced waste without passionate employees and someone like FarmHer Donna who makes the trips down to collect food waste from restaurants.

"When employees step up and help create a conscious culture within an organization, they can transform it," Felchlin said. "We can't all be superheroes like FarmHer Donna is in this story, but we can all be concerned citizens that are mindful of the impact we have on this planet as individuals."

Next steps

For FarmHer Donna, this is only the beginning.

She and Fugere plan to continue their pilot project for a few more months to see how they can manage the volume of waste collected. Eventually, she plans to report back to her waste "suppliers" about the results.

"We need numbers to know if it's feasible to expand this," Yost said. "It's also a scale issue. We want to be able to manage the food waste we take in. We'd love to grow this program, but we need to make sure it's viable."

Herdman plans to continue advocating zero waste for other businesses in the region, but she and Radue are thinking bigger, too. They plan to continue conversations with Definitely De Pere Executive Director Tina Quigley to share zero waste ideas with more businesses and gauge interest in sustainable community projects like urban beehives, green roofs and renewable energy sources.

Herdman said Project Drawdown, an international research agency focused on global climate solutions, provides a wide variety of "no regret" solutions for businesses and communities, including many that benefit the environment, local economies and companies' profit margins.

"Big cities have growing roofs, so why can't we do it here?" Herdman said. "I'd like to see De Pere explore these ideas. When local communities get people together and decide to cut waste, we can start to approach tipping points. The question is how we keep doing this here?"

Jeff Bollier is a St. Louis native whose 19 years in Wisconsin almost qualify him for resident status. He arrived in the Badger State via Beloit College and began his journalism career with the Beloit Daily News. He joined the Oshkosh Northwestern in 2003 and introduced his business column, Streetwise, in 2005. From new stores opening to corporate bankruptcies that impact whole communities, Jeff has done it. His work on restaurant health inspections, an air guitar-playing state assemblyman and an aging hotel have earned plaudits from the Wisconsin Newspaper Association.

Contact him at 920-431-8387 or jbollier@greenbaypressgazette.com; follow him on Twitter at @GBstreetwise .

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