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Several companies in the United States and Canada have seriously begun sampling institutional and municipal organics as feedstocks for earthworms. The techniques and terminology differ somewhat from place to place, but in Florida, California, Ontario and Oregon, large-scale vermicomposting or vermiculture projects are in progress. This represents a resurgence for an industry that has experienced its share of ups and downs. There are stories of municipalities investing in worms to convert problematic organic wastes to topsoil, only to find that the worms had been killed by a toxic contaminant or had all moved overnight to other, more palatable, pastures. In the 1970s, a pyramid scheme of fish bait franchises quickly saturated the market in California and ultimately collapsed, leaving growers with more worms on their hands than they knew what to do with.
"Actually, this was probably the beginning of large-scale vermicomposting," says Clive Edwards, a professor of entomology at Ohio State University who recently organized an international symposium on earthworm ecology (see accompanying article). "People were stuck with all these worms they couldn't sell but they did have this nice end product and began to wonder who might be interested in it."
As the demand for effective methods of diverting organics from North American landfills grew, earthworms began receiving renewed attention. Consequently, an industry centered around producing worms and utilizing their unquestionable skill at digesting organic material and excreting a top quality soil amendment known as castings, has begun to mature.
INSTITUTIONAL INTEREST
For Original Vermitech Systems, Ltd. (OVS) in Toronto, expanding into larger quantities of worms and organics was a natural outgrowth of earlier work. The company, founded in 1990, initially developed a worm bin for household use called "The Canadian Original Vermicomposter." In 1992, after some success with the small bins, OVS began marketing larger units designed to process between 50 and 100 lbs. of organics per day from restaurants, schools and the like. Since earthworms can consume and excrete their body weight in 24 hours, roughly 50 to 100 lbs. of worms are required for each bin. According to Al Eggen, president of Original Vermitech, five such units currently are installed and operating in Ontario. The company recently signed a contract with the University of Ottawa to install up to ten...