Wood Worm Farms

On Saturday we reached an agreement with a recently opened Eco-quartier of Pierrefonds-Roxboro - the closest to us office of Montreal's eco-quartier initiative.

Now the local residents can get help with vermicomposting and use our beginner - friendly wooden bins.

What is an Éco-quartier? Created by the city of Montréal in 1997, the program allocates funds to local environmental groups in different boroughs to manage an office from which they can do environmental outreach and awareness projects in the community. There are now 19 Éco-quartiers on the island of Montréal, and Pierrefonds-Roxboro will be the 20th. Each Éco-quartier office has four principal mandates: sound waste management, cleanliness, urban ecology and beautification, but don't confuse them with the Éco-Centers, which are the places where we bring our hazardous wastes and large items for proper recycling or disposal.

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We have a new distributor in Montreal!
Co-op La Maison Verte is a community-based co-operative that offers ecological solutions for the home as well as resources for responsible consumption. It is the first environmental solidarity co-op in Canada.

Now you can come, see and touch our bins all the time Co-op is open.

Mon - Wed 10am - 6pm
Thursday 10am - 9pm
Friday 10am - 6pm
Saturday 10am - 5pm
Sunday 10am - 5pm

5785 Sherbrooke W (corner Melrose)
Montreal, QC. H4A 1X2
(Vendôme metro, bus 105)
info@cooplamaisonverte.com
514-489-8000

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Recently I've read this wonderful book.
What a tremendous work is done by the author!

I've got answers to many of my questions:
How the garbage is buried and burned.
How recycling programs and plants work.
How the sewage is treated and where the results go.
How municipality composting programs function.
How and why people try to reduce their environmental footprint.

But the book with all it's references and numbers raised another big question:
How it's possible to stop the garbage invasion having an exponential increase rate of the human population and industry from one side
and linear increase rate of garbage processing abilities from another?

The author tries to understand the reasons for such a sharp increase in a garbage "production".
All those reasons, as far, as I understand have more or less historical roots:
- Plastics were discovered and mastered before biodegradable materials.
- Paper industry was strong since the times of a big need in paper and continues to work like this.
- Paints, fertilizers and industrial chemicals could be made less harmful, but old technologies are well developed and there is no big pressure to change them.
- Even computers could be (in some extent) biodegradable.

Like in any normal historical conflict, another famous question returns: "To be or not to be?".
It's clearly impossible to tame the explosion with fire extinguishers.
So what? Just let it go in a "natural way"? I mean die out?

This is exactly what our garbage is bringing us for.

As usually, a good weapon against the historical anachronisms is a political pressure.
To have this pressure we need many supporters, who understand the problem.
We need to be more politically active, if we want to live...

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Each season has it's good sides. This winter in Quebec is specially lucky
for snow. I always use melted snow and rain water for home plants and worms. The curious thing in winter snow is its "dryness". The dead leafs left in an outdoor compost heap become extremely dry because of sublimation and they are a very good bedding for worms.

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My family produces at least 3 pounds (1.2 kg) of compostable waist weekly.
(I don't count cleenexes and paper towels since I rarely put them
in compost.)
All this goes directly to the 6 tray worm bin mentioned before.
Worms seem to be happy of such an amount.
One tray can hold 2 loads like this including additional bedding material, I add with each load.
This makes 2 weeks per tray. So the last tray will come to the bottom
in 6*2 = 12 weeks.
Actually 8 weeks would be enough for a finished compost, so for minimal
needs I would be satisfied with 4 trays.
I keep the additional two to get better processed compost and "just in case".

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