[greenyes] Recycling in Seattle

[Mary Appelhof <mappelho@no.address>]

RE: Kathy Mulady's article:

I am sent the following letter to the editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

To the editor:

Kathy Mulady burst my bubble when she wrote about how Seattle 
residents are getting increasingly sloppy in recycling aluminum, 
glass, and garbage, forcing the City Council to react by putting on a 
mandatory recycling ordinance. I have called Seattle "Worm Central 
USA" for years because they did a survey back in the early '90's 
saying that there were over 4000 worm bins. At an average of 5 lbs 
garbage (food waste) per week, the worms of Seattle were chowing down 
on 20,000 lbs or 10 tens of garbage per week.

When I first started worm composting in 1972 and learned that 2 
pounds of worms could process a pound of garbage a day, I envisioned 
tons of worms eating tons of garbage; the picture in my head was big 
masses of worms and huge piles of garbage. I didn't have the 
wherewithal to do the necessary scaling up, so I did what I could, I 
wrote a little how-to book on using worms to turn food discards into 
rich humus for gardens and house plants. Through Seattle Tilth and 
other outlets, thousands of Seattlites put the information to use and 
the worms to work. With the 4000-worm-bin report, I realized that my 
vision was becoming reality--tons of worms were eating tons of 
garbage--but it was happening one household at a time, a pound of 
worms at a time. The beauty of this was that people were taking 
responsibility for their own wastes, and not relying on centralized 
systems for collection, transport, and processing.

I certainly hope that the worm bins are still going,  the gardens 
enriched by their castings are still growing, and the people who have 
worm bins won't need a law to make them recycle. They'll do it 
because it's the right thing to do.


Mary Appelhof, author
Worms Eat My Garbage
8117 East "O" Avenue
Kalamazoo, MI 49048


Seattle approves mandatory recycling for
residents/businesses- starting 2005

Story from the 12/16/03 Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/152676_recycle16.html

We'll all recycle or else, City Council decides
By 2005, we have to sort our rubbish from the reusables

By KATHY MULADY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Seattle, you're slacking off.
--
Mary Appelhof, Author of "Worms Eat My Garbage"
Flowerfield Enterprises,10332 Shaver Road,Kalamazoo, MI 49024 USA
PLEASE NOTE NEW AREA CODE: PH:269-327-0108  FAX 269-327-7009

"Changing the way the world thinks about garbage"

Subscribe to my WormEzine at: http://www.wormwoman.com or download 
archives in PDF format.