Worms Belly Up to Public Trough to Help Ojai Recyle

Officials in this city are using a new weapon in their fight to cut waste at City Hall--2 1/2 pounds of voracious, garbage-chomping red worms.

The worms have been living since January in a wooden box in front of City Hall, where they feast on the 12 to 15 pounds of coffee grounds, apple cores, orange peels and lunchtime leftovers produced by about 25 city employees each week.

After being eaten by worms, the garbage is turned into a dark, rich material called worm castings, a high-quality soil supplement.

This redirection of City Hall’s kitchen garbage--which used to go to a Ventura County landfill--is part of a waste-reduction plan that officials hope will make the city of 7,500 a model for solutions to the pollution predicament.

“We throw very little away right now,” Assistant City Planner Marilyn Miller said. But, she said, while scanning the two-foot-deep box of squirming, one- to two-inch-long worms, “Our whole point is to stop putting garbage into the waste system altogether.”

The worm bin, which officials would like to see replicated in homes, is only one part of City Hall’s waste-reduction program.

Other components include a proposed composting site behind the building and the continuation of an extensive recycling program.

Ojai City Manager Andrew Belknap said the entire waste-reduction program is directed toward helping the city comply with its goal of cutting waste by 50% before the year 2000.

“Ojai is a very environmentally conscious community. You see this environmental concern in a lot of our planning policies, and the worm-bin project is what we hope to be a first step,” Belknap said.

Miller takes sole responsibility for the worm-bin, which has cost the city $30 for the worms and a little labor for a city employee to build the wooden bin.

Miller’s first task was to persuade her colleagues to sort food waste into a special recycling bin for the worms. “At first they thought I was a bit crazy, “ Miller said.

Once they overcame their initial reluctance, Miller said, her co-workers responded enthusiastically. During the heavy rains earlier this month, public works employees even brought in worms driven above ground to augment the city’s original supply of about 2,500.

Richard Morhar, who owns the Worm Concern, the Thousand Oaks firm that supplied Ojai with its worms, said several other Ventura County cities have incorporated worm boxes in their environmental education programs.

Morhar said vermicomposting--a fancy name for the use of worm bins--will not replace more traditional back-yard composting until people realize that worms are much simpler than the outdoor heaps. “When the city coordinators realize how easy it is to do worm bins, I think they will really start teaching other people to do it,” Morhar said.

In Ojai, Miller’s vermicomposting lessons have already begun.

During a demonstration last week, Miller added Ojai resident Charlotte Koesling to her growing list of converts.

“I know it sounds silly, but I’ve lived on a farm all my life, and I just love worms,” Koesling told Miller.

Koesling was suitably impressed when she learned how extensively the worm bin was being used at City Hall. “They’ll work through all this?” she asked, pointing to a large bed of wet, shredded newspapers dotted with the rotting remains of fruits and vegetables.

“I’m really surprised, I thought it would only be stuff like grass clippings and garden waste,” Koesling said.

Miller said the demonstrations are intended to persuade people that vermicomposting is easy and can be done anywhere. “Hopefully, getting this going will show people that it is something they can do in their own back yard or patio, or even in their apartment.”

But seriously, who could put up with a box of worms and garbage inside an apartment?

“The thing that amazes me is that it doesn’t smell,” Miller said as she raised a rake full of writhing worms.

“I mean, it smells, but it doesn’t stink,” she said, adding that with an attractive cloth cover, a 4-by-4-foot worm box could be used as a bench or window seat in the tiniest of apartments.