Worms threaten climate
Worms used to make compost, whether at home from biodegradable waste or commercially for large scale fertilizer production are responsible for creating threatening greenhouse gases, as reported at zeenews.com.
German scientists claim that nitrous oxide is produced in the digestion process of decomposing material in the worm’s gut, a gas that contributes to global warming 296 times more than CO2.
To environmentalists, worm compost sites have been preferred to waste landfills, which produce methane - a gas 23 times worse than CO2. This new information on the harms of worm composting could convince them back to landfills.
“The amount of worm composting is very, very small and the amount of landfill is huge. But landfill sites are quite well run these days and it is possible to extract about half the gas they generate and use it for electricity generation.
“So the amount of nitrous oxide emitted by large scale worm composting is something we should be looking at before we go further down that route.”
Frederickson said that the research he and his colleagues had done was on very large commercial worm composting “beds” which build up large amounts of nitrogen that is then emitted by the worms as gas.