Vermicomposting: An Earthworm Mediated Waste Treatment Technique

Abstract

Biodegradable organic wastes such as crop residues, municipal, hospital and industrial wastes pose major problems in disposal and treatment. Release of unprocessed animal manures into agricultural fields contaminates ground water causing public health risk (Gandhi et al. Environ Ecol 15:432–434, 1997). Vermicomposting and composting are the most efficient way for converting sludge into useful products. These two well-established processes have been adopted for solid organic waste reclamation – and the final products, composts and vermicomposts, can be used as sources of organic matter for soil amendment, as sources of nutrients for soil fertilization or as growing media constituents for soilless cultivation (Gonzalez et al. Bioresour Technol 101:8897–8901, 2010). Lorimor et al. (Manure management strategies/technologies. White paper on animal agriculture and the environment for national center for manure and animal waste management. Midwest Plan Service, Ames, 2001) concluded that, compared to conventional composting system, the vermicomposting often results in mass reduction, shorter time for processing, and high levels of humus with reduced phytotoxicity in ready material. Vermiculture is a cost-effective tool for environmentally sound waste management (Banu et al. J Environ Biol 22:181–185, 2001; Asha et al. J Hum Ecol 24:59–64, 2008). This low cost technology uses earthworms as bio-agents to treat waste materials (Alidadi et al. Iran J Environ Health Sci Eng 2(4):251–254, 2005). Reduction of particle size and increased nutrient availability in the vermicomposted outputs are reported by many researchers (Ndegwa and Thompson. Bioresource Technol 76:107–112, 2001).