About Us

Hi, my name is Akil and here's the origin story of The Box Of Life.

I started The Box Of Life in Ottawa in 2019 to educate people about a really cool way to compost food scraps - with a worm farm! I had started a worm farm indoors a couple of years before and fell in love with my wormies. I was anxious and frustrated by the apathy and inaction to climate change, so I quit my corporate job, moved from the USA to Canada and decided to make composting mainstream and start a business!

I started composting with the intent of eliminating food waste from garbage because it's bad for the environment - food waste rotting in landfills releases methane which has 80x more warming potential than CO2. But over time, I have learnt that compost is really important for improving soil health and when added to soil can sequester atmospheric carbon and lock it beneath our feet.


The box of life our mission

PEOPLE + PLANET + PROFIT

The Box Of Life is a social enterprise and we care for the people and our planet first and foremost, while making some profits. These our values:

SUPPORT LOCAL 
We manufacture our boxes at a social enterprise in Ottawa that hires people with disabilities. 11 different sets of hands are involved in making and packing our boxes to get them shipped to our customers. Your support helps us support these important jobs.
 
SUSTAINABLY SOURCE MATERIALS
The cedar we use is grown on sustainably managed forests and milled locally. It pains us to use virgin materials but we take some solace in knowing that you, the customer, will create compost that will nourish the land.
  
BUILD COMMUNITY
We engage with communities to build zero-waste, resilient food systems.
 
EMPOWER THE NEXT GENERATION
Most people don't know about earthworms and we want to change that for good. We offer vermicomposting workshops to schools as a way to connect kids to Nature and learn about decomposition. Our school program currently offers workshops in Kelowna, BC and Ottawa, ON but we ship our classroom worm farms across Canada and USA!