“Bottled water has been described as “one of the greatest cons of the 20th century” and as “marketing’s answer to the emperor’s new clothes”(1)
Rather than typing some thoughts into this post, I invite you to watch the video clip above. CINE-ONU will be screening the full film “Tapped” for free to mark the World Water Day on March 22nd. If you are in Brussels and would like to see it, register with an email until March 21st 5:30 to cine-onu@unrig.org.
Somebody at the ecovillage, I visited in summer, said to me:
“It’s sad how we take nutrients from the earth and
rather than giving them back we waste precious drinking water (see toilets) or fill dump sites.”
Good point, I thought.
Shortly after that I got introduced to wormeries and decided that this was my chance of giving back (a little).. What is a wormery?
“A Wormery is a box system that contains composting worms .. [and] .. is an easy, convenient, environmentally-friendly and efficient way of turning your waste kitchen scraps into high quality super-rich compost all the year round.”
For a normal compost one would need a garden, but the good thing about a wormery is, that it can be done indoors as well, in fact the worms work best at temperatures between 14-25° Celcius. I don’t really need all that earth, but some friends already expressed an interest in it and I bet the trees on my street will be happy takers as well.
So how do you get started?
Get 2 opaque boxes and a lid (In my case I use another box as the lid). Of course you can also buy wormeries in stores, but they are rather expensive (over 100EUR I was told)
Punch holes into one of the boxes and the lid. The box with no holes will be at the bottom, this is where very nutritious water (leachate) released in the process will be collected. The lid needs to have holes, so the worms can breathe.
Fill the box with the holes with a mix of 2-3cm shredded newspaper and cardboard. (I just teared it into small pieces.)
Get some worms and place them on top of the shredded paper mix. (Worms come with the compost they currently live in and can be picked up here for free)
Add some organic waste, approximately the amount of the compost with the worms. (Do not use orange peels or anything cooked.)
Cover with a sheet of wet newspaper (this will keep flies from enjoying the waste)
Leave the compost to itself for 1-2weeks. The worms have to get used to their new environment.
Now you can start adding more organic waste. Remember to always cover it to keep out flies (If you don’t like the newspaper approach a cotton towel can be used as well.)
Questions? Check out this FAQ or comment on this post.
This programme focusses specifically on events & festivals for younger people. The idea is to motivate the crowds to recycle an item that tends to create the biggest waste (in terms of volume) on most bigger festivals: Plastic bottles, cups and cans. › Continue reading
An Earthship is an ‘earth-sheltered’ building that functions autonomously (profiting from sunlight, temperature, wind, soil, landscape and natural resources). Mike Reynolds was one of the first to design and build Earthships in the 1970s. Today there are many thousand Earthships that are build all over the planet. Different shapes, designs and infrastructures make it possible to optimize an earthship specfic climate conditions.
The interesting thing is that one of the main materials that is being used to create an Earthship are old tires which are filled with Soil (one of the best isolation materials). Old tins and bottles can be used together with clay in order to build the house.
Special are also the unique shapes that Earthships are build in. Usually people do not only spend lots of time and effort in building a selfsustained house with a water recycling system and renewable energy resources but they also create innovative living spaces.
Loading ...