Urban Composting

Emily and I recently began attending First Free (website: www.firstfree.com) here in Chicago. It is in the Andersonville neighborhood, and so far we have been very pleased.

This past weekend FF had an urban composting workshop that taught you how to start your own indoor vermiculture (read: worm) composting in your apartment. They were even kind enough to provide the means to make one, and at the end we took one home with us. That’s it in the picture below.

Now, we haven’t yet purchased the worms we need to start, and the worms that thrive in this controlled environment are not native to the area so we can’t just go out and dig in the soil for earthworms. So the compost bin you see hasn’t gone “live” just yet. Nevertheless, we are excited to start.

A significant portion of the waste in our home is from food, and once we begin compostig we should be able to reduce between 10-30 percent of our waste (this is an estimate, based in part on information from the workshop and experience). The process will also yield wonderful compost that can in turn be used to fertilize more plants. We have very minimal natural light in our apartment and can’t grow most house plants successfully, nor do we have a yard or any land, so if you are in the need of some good compost on 3-6 months, I’m your guy.

More and more I appreciate things such as this that increase my awareness of nature and its processes. I realize that composting in an apartment with worms alien to the native environment is by no means wholly natural. But it replaces the need for an artificial disposal of waste–putting used food into a bag and having it transported to a landfill somewhere–with a biological one that has tangible benefits. And as a city dweller, I am often removed from direct contact with nature or the land. Anything that helps to bridge that distance is appreciated.