How to Get Rid of Left Over Food at Christmas

After the festivities, most families throw away Christmas left over food.  As an alternative to sending your Christmas left overs to a landfill site, why not try using a worm composter to turn kitchen waste into compost and liquid fertiliser.

A estimated 230 tonnes of festive food and drink is thrown away in the UK during Christmas and the New Year.

Much of this food then ends up in landfill sites but worm composters provide an eco friendly alternative.

Worms are one of nature's recyclers.  They will eat a whole variety of waste, not just left over Christmas dinner but also some more surprising things such as newspapers, egg boxes, animal or human hair, dog poo and the contents of vacuum cleaner bags.

Worms do not have teeth.  Instead they break up the food in their gizzard.  The result is a fine odourless compost referred to as Black Gold and a nutrient rich liquid fertiliser - Worm Tea.

Setting up a worm composter is relatively easy.  There are a number of bins on the market.  These specialist composters incorporate a sump with a tap to extract the Worm Tea and usually have a number of levels.  One composter is generally large enough to cope with the waste from most families but, for larger families, schools etc. extra layers can be added to increase capacity.

There are around 2,700 varieties of earth worms.  One of the best for composting is the Dendrobaena which is used widely in the UK.

Worms eat a large amount of food daily.  Dendrobaena worms typically consume an amount equal to 50% of their body weight each day.

Whilst functionally most wormeries work in the same way, their appearance can vary greatly from a plain black or green plastic casing to a wooden wormery designed to look like a beehive.

For details of womeries for sale go to Spotty Green Frog.