Food is not waste.
It's the raw material of soil. Somewhere along the way we forgot that, and started sending it to landfill instead. We'd like to help fix that — one worm bin at a time.
Australia throws out roughly 7.6 million tonnes of food every year, worth about $36.6 billion. Victorians alone contribute in the order of 2.4 million tonnes of that — most of it from households, restaurants and supermarkets, and most of THAT is destined for landfill.
Landfill is the worst possible destination for food. Buried under other rubbish, it breaks down anaerobically and releases methane, which is a greenhouse gas roughly 25 times more potent than CO₂! Food waste is estimated to account for around 3% of Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions.
And the frustrating part is that none of it needs to end up there. Every scrap that reaches a worm farm becomes something far more valuable, it produces more worms, castings, and living microbial activity soil. The same material that quietly cooks the planet in a bin can greatly heal a garden or a farm.
"There is no such thing as 'away'. When we throw anything away, it must go somewhere." — Annie Leonard
Our small part
Wonky Worms started as a very WONKY continuous flow (CFT) bin in our backyard. We noticed how quickly a household's scraps disappeared into dark, alive soil, and how the vegetable beds we fed with it responded. So we decided that its time we scale this into a movement to redirect victorian food waste product into BLACK GOLD!
Our aim is to put our WONKY worm army into every neighbourhood and fight the food waste epidemic. If that happens, tonnes of local food scraps stop going to landfill every week, and thousands of gardens get better soil in return.
How you can help
- · Start a worm farm — we'll help you pick a starter colony that suits your climate and space.
- · Use castings instead of synthetic fertiliser — better for your soil, better for the water table.
- · Talk about it. Most people don't realise landfill food is a HUGE problem that needs to be promptly dealth with.
Figures drawn from Food Innovation Australia's National Food Waste Strategy baseline and Sustainability Victoria's Recycling Industry Strategic Plan.