Benefits of worm composting
There are a wide range of benefits from worm composting. They range from local economics (your wallet) to the global scale (less garbage, less waste, less pollutants). Worm composting benefits also mean healther plants. You get to harvest worm castings, which is a great soil enhancer. The worm castings helps soil hold water better and naturally provides more microbial activity. This helps plants roots so the plant can grow better, producing better crop yields. Place worm castings on your indoor or outdoor plants and watch the benefits as the plants thrive. My plants honestly love the fact that I do worm composting. They are healthier and get better nutrients (without any store bought chemicals). I feel safer eating from my garden when it's enhanced with worm castings from my own composting bins instead of fertilizer from some corporation.
Economic benefits of worm composting
Another benefit of worm composting is economic. I used to purchase this compost in spring for my plants and garden. No more. Since I own an indoor red worm composting bin, the worms handle the hard work of composting, my trash into rich, organic soil. My worm composting gives me the benefit of free worm castings! Worm composting is free…I add the table scraps and some yard waste with shredded newspaper, they take care of the rest! It's as though I won a lifetime supply of the stuff...with free delivery to my house.
Reduced garbage by worm composting
By worm composting in my indoor composting bins, I am able to reduce the garbage output of my house...fairly sizeably. This means, the garbage truck hauls less material (saving gas/emissions) and my landfill is filled up less. There is also less biowaste feeding into water tables from landfills. Things I feed my worms (Feeding Compost Worms for more info) include egg shells, egg shell containers, shredded paper products (newspaper, cardboard, paper towels, junk mail), vegetable and fruit scraps, etc. They love coffee beans, tea bags, dryer lint, too. Composting worms eat a lot of stuff, about half their weight per day, so 4 pounds of worms will eat 2 pounds of garbage each day. That means a whole lot less garbage filling up landfills.
Personal benefits from worm composting
My biggest personal benefit from worm composting is that my kids get a better understanding of nature. They see the worms composting and learn how mother nature recycles and reuses. My children get to hold the worms (when they want to) and get a connection to nature they would otherwise miss. Dirt is good for kids. So is an understanding of how our world works. I have had priceless moments with my kids while digging for worms or picking them up off sidewalks after a heavy rain.
Worm composting is a great topic of conversation
When friends come over, they love to talk about my worm composting bins and see how they work. Just this past weekend we had friends over and spent twenty minutes digging for worms in my compost pile in my backyard. I know that doesn't sound fun, but in 20 minutes, we had dozens of worms and the kids were enjoying holding massive, moving balls of the worms.
Final benefit from worm composting
I feel that in a small way, my carbon footprint is less. My direct impact on the environment is less because I do worm composting. It doesn't sound like much, when one person does it...but imagine the benefit to earth if 1 billion of us did this?