New pets
First, these guys are douchebags. Because the folks as the Tennessee Center for Policy Research are either willfully ignorant or just partisan hacks (surprise! it's the latter), I had to wake up yesterday to the sounds of Dennis and Callahan on WEEI bashing my boy Al Gore. I realize most people haven't heard of carbon credits and offsets, so I can see why this "story" would gain some traction, but suffice to say that Al Gore is not a hypocrite on climate change. (I'm going to post about carbon offsets later in this series about reducing your footprint)
Now, about the new pets. When we cook, there's obviously scraps and leftover food that ends up getting tossed in the trash. The sensible, green way to get rid of food waste is to let it rot in your backyard (in a compost heap), but we live in an apartment and besides, winter isn't the best time to start composting. Unless you can move it indoors, of course, which is exactly what we're doing.
This afternoon I'm driving down to South County to meet with the Worm Ladies of Charlestown and pick up some red wiggler worms. They're going to eat my garbage (the worms, not the ladies). I made a home for them by drilling about 600 holes in a few Rubbermaid totes, ripped up some newspaper for them to hang out in, and starting tomorrow I'll be tossing in coffee grinds, salsa scraps, and, if I can ever start eating more salads, unused vegetable matter. Supposedly, and this will be important to test out, it won't stink at all.
So the benefit is less trash, which should be everyone's goal whether or not they compost, and also some really nice, healthy soil for the garden. Once the worms are done chewing up my waste, we'll have bins of high-nutrient worm poop that they sell for big bucks at the garden supply store. I can't wait!
Pictures later.