Let's cure the bubonic plague with malaria!

We at Neighborhood Worm Farm are committed to act responsibly and think about how we can recycle valuable resources or reduce energy consumption.

Therefore we advocate reducing waste in the household. To us it makes sense to recycle any waste on the spot, right where it is produced, to eliminate further transportation or handling elsewhere. We believe keeping worms are ideal to deal with kitchen garbage. They are easy to handle, 100% biologic and instead of consuming energy, they supply you with the best fertilizer nature has to offer.

Now here is industry's answer to reducing garbage: Companies like National Panasonic and Hitachi came up with a brilliant gadget that purportedly transfers kitchen garbage into compost within hours. It almost looks like a rice cooker, only bigger, and has a chamber which receives the kitchen garbage. You can dump up to 700 g of organic waste at a time. Close the lid, push a button, and magic will run its course. 105 minutes and 1.75 KWh later you will find all garbage reduced to 1/7 of its original volume, burned down to a miserable little, almost odorless pile. Let's feel good about it! We've reduced 700 grams of garbage to 100 grams, saving 600 g space in the municipal landfill. And it does not smell as bad as garbage.

But at what cost?

Not only did we fork out 70,000 Yen [ USD 583] for the equipment (subsidized by cities for up to 20,000 yen!! [USD 166]), we've also consumed 1.75 KWh electricity in half an afternoon. To produce this amount of electricity, approximately 1 kg CO2 was added to the atmosphere - negligible, you might think, until you multiply this amount by a million households [only 1 in 40] and 365 days per year: Collectively, that reduction in kitchen waste a la Hitachi burdened the environment with an additional 251,038.40 tons of CO2, not counting the energy needed to produce and distribute the million so called home-composters.

Can you really cure the bubonic plague with malaria?


To add a little more insult, NEC markets its home-composters under the "ECO" predicate; a cute leafy logo that assures the house wife everything is well thought out and ecologically sound.

We certainly disagree.