Happy birthday to us! Wormlovers has just turned 10 years young – a whole decade of dedicated worm loving and worm sharing!
A tenth anniversary is a good time to reflect on our journey so far and give ourselves (and YOU dear supporter!) a little pat on the back. At times it’s been a hard road, balancing a visionary nutrient-cycling philosophy with the realities of running a small business/social enterprise, but we wouldn’t change a thing! We are still driven by the idea that there is no such thing as waste, only wasted resources, and wake up each morning looking forward to loving the worm and loving the world.
Our worm farms and other composting systems are in use all over Australia, in households, schools, cafes and restaurants, offices, apartment blocks, factories, council buildings, and wherever food waste is generated. Over the last ten years we reckon our customers and clients have processed somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 tonnes of organic waste through composting systems supplied by Wormlovers.
The valuable nutrients contained in this material would otherwise have gone to landfill, sending an additional 10,000 to 20,000 tonnes of CO2 going into the atmosphere contributing to climate change. Instead, those nutrients are back in the soil producing more healthy plants and food and continuing to draw down carbon, hold water and help connect humans to nature. That’s what it’s all about, and why we do what we do.
Here are a few of the highlights of our achievements and significant moments over the last 10 years:
Wormlovers – in the first 10 years we:
- Delivered hundreds of worm farming, planting and home composting workshops for thousands of residents, school students, council and corporate staff and community groups.
- Launched an education programme for primary schools, aligned to the Australian school curriculum, and now downloaded by hundreds of schools across Australia.
- Launched the NZ made Hungry Bin worm farm (arguably the most efficient, easiest to use and cleverly designed worm composting system around) into Australia in the same year.
- Design and constructed Australia’s first combination rooftop garden-worm farm at Curtin House, Melbourne. Developed our own ultralightweight rooftop grow medium to comply with rooftop weight restrictions.
- Developed a bulk worm castings system, managing inputs and harvesting to produce a consistent, nutrient dense product and remove the need for screening.
- Designed our own wicking bed systems using recycled materials. Hundreds of these efficient productive container gardens have been installed in community gardens, laneways, community centres complete with our nutrient rich worm powered grow medium.
- Established a 5000 sq. m operations site at Melbourne Water’s Western Treatment Plant, enabling us to scale up our worm and worm farm output production.
- Won the City of Melbourne’s prestigious Melbourne Award for Environmental Sustainability in 2018.
- Developed a range of worm farm accessories such as durable worm blankets and improved worm farm conditioner.
- Launched the Plastia Range of premium European urban nutrient cycling products in collaboration with Ryset.
- Presenting our products at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden show each year
……and sit tight, more to come!