The Mount Nelson, one of Cape Town's oldest and poshest hotels, has got worms.
And they're doing nothing to get rid of them. In fact, they're actively encouraging the mass of wriggling creatures by feeding them with remains from the breakfast buffet and the hotel's famous "high teas".
But there's method in their madness: the worms are a novel way of getting rid of the waste food from the hotel and making compost in the process.
The hotel management has now established an earthworm farm. Once the earthworms have scoffed the hundreds of kilogrammes of waste food, their excrement becomes rich in nutrients and makes an excellent fertiliser.
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The thousands of earthworms are currently munching through 200kg of breakfast buffet and high tea scraps, which is 20 percent of the hotel's usable organic waste.
The project was the idea of Mary Murphy, an environmental activist, and Roger Jacques, a botanist and and vermiculturalist.
Murphy said: "Waste is a huge problem and we need to find better ways of processing it. Usually, it winds up in landfills and polluting our groundwater and generating greenhouse gases responsible for climate change.
"In nature, there is no such thing as waste. The waste products from one organism provides the energy for other organisms. We have ignored this basic principle in the design of our urban spaces."
She said earthworms were able to convert in a matter of days what would otherwise be "a putrid, foul-smelling mass of food waste" into earthworm compost.
The hotel has already begun using the fertiliser. Next time you look at their flourishing Pink Lady pot plants, spare a thought for the humble worm.
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This article was originally published on page 6 of Cape Times on July 13, 2006
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