In a project that started in February 2015
and lasts for 10 weeks The Northener (the
independent student newspaper of NKU) is highlighting 10 cool offices in NKU.
Each office tenant tells the stories behind why their office looks and how it
creates a good environment. It turns out that one of the offices has several
hundreds of worms! But that actually is a VERY GOOD thing. How can that
be?! Read on…
The operations hotspot for the Center of
Environmental Education is Rosie Santos’ office at Founders Hall. Among the
lively wall colors, postcards and plants Rosie keeps a special green box with
worms. What originally was brought into the office to explain and teach about
decomposers in the nitrogen cycle, turned out to be an addition to the office
that actually helps being friendlier to the environment without much especial
or extra effort. The worms eat scraps from biodegradable food. You just need to
add the small pieces of left-overs, things like meat, dairy, egg shells, or
coffee grinds. Even shredded paper! The office space is evidently a great place
for this, it doesn’t produce smell or noise, doesn’t require special sunlight,
and also doesn’t require special attention apart from removing their soil every
once in a while and keep on adding small amounts of their ‘food’, which is your
biodegradable waste.
The result is a type of soil that is rich
in nitrogen and it can be used as a potent fertilizer for the plants that for
sure people have in the offices. This helps create a virtuous cycle in which
you eat healthy, you put biodegradable waste to be organically recycled, then
the produced soil is put to nurture more and healthier plants, and why not
food!
This certainly helps the office spaces be
more sustainable but it is also useful for people’s homes. Setting the box
isn’t difficult, you can buy in the internet (a simple search for ‘worm
composer box’ gives several results with prices for all budgets) and there are
many videos on the internet that explain
everything in under 5 minutes. It’s a simple, free and a direct way of helping
the planet.
Source: Carrie Crotzer, Kody Kahle, Lindsey Rudd, Wyatt Nolen. "Top
NKU Offices" 9 Feb. 2015. Web. 14 Mar. 2015.
<http://thenortherner.com/multimedia/top-offices/index.html>
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