OMG Worms- vermicompost.

Technology is fantastic in helping to minimise food wastage. Whether from production, harvesting or distribution, technology has not failed to increase yields yet maintain the quality of food. However who is to say that with it, we cannot find alternative methods to minimise food waste or its emissions. From the many policies that have been introduced in a bid to curb this problem, the one I found most simple yet effective was one where certain Cape Town Hotels bought earthworm farms to decompse all their food waste in a way to minimise emission. It showed me that there are alternatives to technology, you just have to look in the most natural places, An article by Wyngaard & Lange (2013) evaluated the success of the various eco initiatives to recycle water and food waste. It also concluded that these initiatives would be a successful future endeavour to pursue.

Research by Wyngaard & Lange (2013) has found several Cape Town hotels were implementing vermicomposting - usage of earthworm farms to turn organic food waste into compost. The farms consisted of worm bins that houses the earthworms. It is multi-layered -firstly,the top layer of soil to which food waste is added to feed the earthworms. Secondly, the worm cast which is the rich soil produced by earthworms and initially contains the earthworms in the bin and lastly a tray at the bottom of the bin that collects the fluid produced by the earthworms. The compost produced by the earthworm farm after approximately six months may be harvested once it has turned into a crumbly dark soil (Jeffery et al. 2008). The fluid collected may then be converted into liquid compost as well. The compost should further be free of any foul odours and should have the smell of earth. It can then be used as fertiliser for crops. 


One version of a earthworm bin. Diagram taken from Wikipedia.



One hotel used the compost for their the herb garden which further provided sustainable ingredients to use in the kitchens. Another hotel reused their water directly through harvesting rainwater. The direct reuse of waste water allowed the hotels to irrigate their gardens during the warmer summer months with harvested rainwater. During the colder winter months, the hotels were able to irrigate their gardens solely through their rainwater harvesting initiatives as the gardens’ watering needs decreased.This significantly reduced their water consumption rates.

Overall these eco-initiatives were considered successes as each hotel managed to recycle up to 50 kg of food waste week. They also prevented roughly 38 wheeled dustbins of food waste per month from reaching landfills which would otherwise contribute to unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions and take up landspace.

Furthermore, from a ground survey carried out byWyngaard & Lange (2013), the various managements felt that government support would benefit the long term success of eco initiatives within hotels. 67% of the respondents in the Food and Beverage department and 78% of the respondents in the Rooms Division department were accepting of government  support for the implementation of eco initiatives within their hotels to ensure sustainable tourism by reducing food waste.

Honestly, I found this idea so simple yet effective and elusive. This may because in developed nations like Singapore, we are so reliant on technology that we sometimes fail to see that the solution to the problem of food waste disposal is so simple and natural. I would like to see more hotels in Singapore adopt such eco-initiatives as well!


References:

Wyngaard, A., & Lange, R. (2013). The effectiveness of implementing eco initiatives to recycle water and food waste in selected Cape Town hotels. International Journal of Hospitality Management, (13), 309-316. Retrieved October 10, 2015, from http://bb2sz3ek3z.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=The effectiveness of implementing eco ini