Impact Hub Ottawa's Worm Composter
Thanks for visiting! This is a summary of the ever-evolving partnership of Impact Hub & Box Of Life over the years to help the Hub turn food waste into soil.
Impact Hub Ottawa is a coworking and networking space for organizations working towards making our world a better place. Located in downtown Ottawa on Slater Street, it is a beautiful space spread over two floors of bright widows. What stood out to me was that they had over a hundred plants in their office!
The Box Of Life was first invited to be a part of the community during a holiday market in 2022 when we were invited to demonstrate our vermicomposting solutions to the “Hubbers”. We later installed our wooden Worm Studio in the Hub, tucked away between all their plants. Although Impact Hub already had a compost pickup service paid for and managed by the building, they liked the idea of composting some of it for their plants. On a side note, the Impact Hub helped convince their building property managers to include composting in the waste management contracts for tenants. Pretty impressive!
A worm farm is an ecosystem containing red wiggler earthworms who are fed organic matter, and the wormies eat the scraps and turn it into worm castings, in about 3 weeks.
The Hub’s Worm Studio was stewarded by a couple of volunteers at the hub and they took responsibility for feeding the worms coffee grinds, and paper napkins. As the worm bin started seeing more usage in the space, we received feedback from members that it was too small and was being overfed and causing issues. Akil received a grant to investigate a new idea of offering worm farm rentals to offices, so we decided to pilot the concept at Impact Hub.
We replaced the small bin, and brought in the bigger worm farm - The Hungry Bin, on December 19, 2023, and hosted a Lunch & Learn to introduce the Hubbers to the new home their office wormies would live in, and our pitch to end food waste at the Hub.
The Hungry Bin occupies 2ft x 2ft of floor space and can be moved relatively easily. It’s a robust worm farm that requires little maintenance and is designed for easy use - just feed scraps in the top, and remove the finished castings from the bottom compartment. Although it can be fed up to a kilogram of food scraps a day, when we tracked the feedings at the Hub for 3 months, the worms were being fed an average of 2.5 kg a week. The Hub is turning hundreds of kilos of scraps each year into wonderful worm castings!
The worms are fed by Hub volunteers, (thanks Delainey, Susan, Keshana and Olivia), and are currently under Scotty’s supervision. Akil is typically at the Hub every couple of weeks, and I always ask about the worms and am able to answer questions the volunteers have about it. I am happy that they too enjoy the process of feeding the worms!
The volunteers collect scraps in two small 4L buckets that are kept in the freezer until the day of feeding, and they mostly collect coffee grinds and fruit and veggie scraps leftover after events. Beside the kitchen sink, we have left a compost container for used paper napkins.
On average, about ¾ of both buckets are filled each week and fed to the worms. An equal quantity of used paper napkins are added as well. We have signs on the worm farm telling other people not to feed the worms. We have been considering creating a weekly 10 minute public viewing of how the worms are fed and taken care of - “meet your zookeeper”! A great way to build community and bring people together to create change.
The base weekly maintenance of the worm bin involves the following steps -
1. Check for observable worm activity on the surface, with worms uniformly spread around
2. Check for smells and unwanted insects
3. Check for adequate moisture levels - ecosystem should be wet like a sponge
4. Add food scraps by digging a hole and burying inside the ecosystem
5. Add 1-2 inch thick layer of bedding (case paper shreds and soiled napkins) on top
As part of our agreement with the Hub, a worm farmer from the Box Of Life comes in every month to service the worms and ensure smooth operation. We harvest worm castings from the box every 4 months as well! With each harvest we fill up a 5 gallon bucket with worm castings. We then feed the Hub plants, and distribute the rest for Hubbers to take home. We often coordinate with the Hub team to promote the harvesting session as a 15 min workshop, which attracts a few curious onlookers with their questions. Alongside the smaller workshops, we have been hosting community workshops every Earth Day as educate folks about vermicomposting, waste and healthy soils.
Ok now the results of composting - Worm castings are a magic fertilizer for plants! They contain millions of microorganisms that bring life back into soils and give much needed nutrients to plants in a water soluble format. Worm castings are proven to greatly enhance plant growth, improve disease resistance, and eliminate the need for synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.
Vermicomposting turns organic matter into soil, mimicking the type of decomposition found in Nature that has kept our planet thriving for millions of years. Our human civilization has not yet figured out how to properly deal with our waste, and our hope is that someday soon all our waste can be fed to the soil as a powerful act of regeneration.
Our goal with the Hub partnership is to raise awareness about composting in the hopes that it will get tenants to rethink their relationship with food waste. When composting becomes a behaviour change associated with feeding the worms, it becomes less of a chore, and instead a fun activity to participate in. And by offering it as a service to our clients, we offer long term support towards their waste goals and employee engagement activities.
The Impact Hub has a big poster listing out all UN SDG’s as soon as you enter the space and the organizations that are part of the Hub are all working towards one or more of these goals. Vermicomposting plays a part in 8 of the sustainable goals! The Teaching School at Queen’s University wrote an excellent article about worms and the UN SDGs and you can also watch this heartwarming video on how students reacted to a vermicomposting project in school! We may have had a small part to play in making that happen :)
Here’s more details about the goals:
SDG 2 (Zero Hunger): Worm castings made from food waste recycles nutrients and improves soil fertility for sustainable agriculture and food production.
SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation): Vermicomposting toilets are changing how rural people process waste. It reduces the need for grid connected infrastructure and can be deployed at scale.
SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production): Recycles organic waste, reducing landfill use and supporting sustainable patterns.
SDG 13 (Climate Action): Cuts methane emissions from waste and sequesters carbon in soil.
SDG 15 (Life on Land): Enhances soil health, biodiversity, and restores degraded lands.
SDG 1, 5, 8 (No Poverty/Gender Equality/Economic Growth): Decentralized composting models can create millions of jobs globally and provides alternative income for rural women and mothers.
For more information about our other projects please visit www.theboxoflife.com or contact Akil at akil@theboxoflife.com