Too many cooks will spoil the broth. One person should be responsible for putting food in bin,everyone else dump's theirs in a storage container. Naturally the kids will actually place much of the food in bin under supervision. You might think about a compost bin to receive surplus cardboard,diapers,paper and food.

I think you will have more than enough stuff for the bin without incorporating grass clippings. Grass clippings can cause a lot of complications. They're wet, they're very high in nitrogen, they tend to clump down and start hot composting themselves - we were just talking about this in the Soil Compost & Mulch conference. The hot composting is bad for the worms, plus grass clippings may bring in other unwanted baggage like bugs, lawn chemicals...in short, I'd omit them.

I absolutely agree with klem1 - in any kind of office or workplace or school environment or anyplace with multiple people milling around, it could cause a lot of headaches to let multiple people put things in a worm bin. It's really hard in any workplace to get people to pick up after themselves and wash their coffee mugs, let alone remember what should and shouldn't go into a worm bin...plus, balancing the food supply with the worms' capacity to eat it is going to take careful monitoring and responsibility by one person.

It sounds like a "compost bucket" is the way to go - have a bin or bucket where people put their compostables, with prominently posted guidelines about what to include, and then draw from that when feeding your worm bin. It sure does sound like you are generating plenty of material to feed a regular outdoor compost pile as well, and that would be a good place for the excess scraps that the worm bin can't comfortably handle as well as the grass clippings and such. But I guess if that were easy to do at your location you would be doing it already - ? If all else fails perhaps someone could take home the excess compostables for a home compost pile.

I'm going to pretend you didn't mention diapers because I just. don't. think. you want to go there. Even if you could somehow make it work (it would be a LOT of work and struggle I think) just imagine parents getting hold of the information and panicking about safety and hygiene (and they would have a point!) There may be regulatory issues as well limiting what you can do with diapers as a care facility.

Another thought, since rereading your post I see that you have only had your home bin for two months - yay that it's going well! But all the same, you might want to give yourself more time and experience with managing your home bin before tackling a workplace bin and all its complications. New wormers may get carried away with enthusiasm before they've encountered the things that may go wrong...

Maybe once you've had your home bin going for a while, you could split the bin and start a second bin at home so that it's up and running and well populated with worms before you bring it in to work. This may or may not be convenient, obviously not if you would have to haul the bin to work on a bicycle or bus :-)

I think it's a great idea as an educational tool in classroom and perhaps organize something for the whole facility - but mainly as a way to get kids thinking about where stuff comes from and goes. (Does your class have a garden or potted plants?). But will be very difficult and potentially problematic to set up in volumes needed to handle all wastes. And That's before talking about diapers.

"And That's before talking about diapers."

I am glad you mentioned diapers. Aside from concurns theparsley expressed above,if it only contained urine, wouldn't a 100% boi-degradiable diaper be near perfect material for composting? Brown and green (white and yellow in this case (:) in one package.

okay, thank you for all the input. About the diapers. That is like the only thing we have tackled already actually. We have a separate "diaper bin" which we rent from a company making bio gas. So I guess they just use it somehow? I am not sure.

The problem with a normal compost pile is that we aren't that big in outside space and I can't just use a corner to make a big compost pile when the kids could also use that space to run around. All the waste now just goes into the normal bin together with plastics, papers and such.

The location I want to try it on, is our smallest location with primarily offices; it has only one 'class' of 2-4 yo and one of 0-2 year olds. Therefor I think the amount of waste wouldn't be soooo much. I will list it: each day (monday till friday)

• I think about 1 or 2 banana peels.
• 1 or 2 pear skins and cores
• about 4 or 5 apple cores
• 1 bell pepper top and seedy inside
• carrot tops
• 2 coffee filters
• 10? herbal tea filters
• all the corrugated cardboard or office papers they could want, we wouldn't be able to use all of this I know.

Okay so maybe it would still be a lot...

I think I will start with just asking the people on one of the days I work (for example only on tuesdays) to collect the compostables. That way I can start with feeding them every tuesday. Then if it is all going well I can add fridays and so on. If we can get some of the amount of waste down, it is still a job well done I think.

I just added the diapers, because I think it is a bit ridiculous that we go through all the trouble of using eco friendly diapers and then it gets burned/gassed (how do they make biogas?) anyways. On the other hand, when I think about it some more, as the primary handler I don't think I want to bother using diapers... eww.

so maybe, just hold of on informing my coworkers except for maybe one or two... only feed them vegetables, especially during summer. It is a pity most of our compostables will still get thrown away, but you need to start small anyway and this way when in fall/winter there are no fruit flies anymore, I can gently start adding some fruit.

I think the point at that age it's more important to get across the idea that there is a cycle of life and that everything comes from somewhere and goes somewhere. That 'garbage' is the wrong way to think about things. Food comes from somewhere. Etc. you probably don't have the onsite resources to do everything but you can get across the concepts.

There are two separate objectives here: one, to keep this organic waste out of the landfill by composting it, and second, to entertain and educate the little kids. If chiara v. only had the second objective in mind, a small worm bin handling a small percentage of the school's scraps would be enough. But she cares about the first objective too.

Unfortunately it is logistically very hard to handle all the organic waste from an institution or organization on-site - even if it's a small institution. That's why there are organic waste composting services that do pick-up and centralize the composting operation - in places where the city or county doesn't do that yet. Much less fun than watching your own worms wiggle, I admit.

Might even educate some co-workers along the way.

@parsley, yeah I like the educational value for the kids. But I kinda also wanted to keep the waste out of the landfills and such. O well I might try to start a small bin just for the first objective and keep pestering my boss so that we might get compost bin services.

Sounds good. Every bIt helps. And often when you get started other ideas and options come up. I'd just recommend starting modestly - sometimes people start with big ideas that turn out to be unmanageable or cause problems and end up back at the beginning.

I've done this with 3rd graders using a blue Rubbermaid bin with holes in the sides and bottom. The bin was adjacent to the lunch tables, and the kids could come and bury their lunch scraps when finished eating.

This is what I ended up building, it is 1 m by 50cm by 35 cm. It also has two lids that each cover half of it. It doesn't have a floor. It is sitting directly on the dirt. To prevent the worms from escaping while they are not settled yet, I put some cardboard on the bottom. Then I put a lot of shredded cardboard. At the far end you see some grass clippings from last week which were very dry. In the front half I put the worms. Then I covered it with cardboard.

I think this one is medium sized and while we won't be able to compost everything, we will have enough compost to feed our flower beds. Also we can gross out, err teach, the kids :D

I mainly choose this size, because I had two palets lying around, that I could easily convert.

I think grossing out the kids is a valid goal in itself.

You can put your food scraps, fruit peelings, veggies, etc, but it will take a long time for the food to break-down and bacteria attack it so worms can eat it. I save my excess food scraps in containers such as large coffee cans with lids. When I have enough to process, using my big mouth juicers which Ive been using for years and works well. It turns the mix into a mush. If the pulp is too dry then I will add the juice or part of it back into the mix. Using that method the worms can start working on it/ eating it sooner.