City Composting in a Worm Hotel.

Vermicompost harvested from the Worm Hotel of Restaurant As.

Compost on the menu.

One year ago we organised a succesfull crowdfunding campaign to start placing worm hotels at restaurants in the city. It had been a wish for us to build worm hotels for restaurants and the money we raised in the crowdfunding made it possible to build and place the first worm hotels at restaurants in the Amsterdam area (The Netherlands). 

Finishing all the worm hotels and the rewards for the backers of the crowdfuding has been a challenge, but now all - but one - are up and running and producing beautiful vermicompost to feed the gardens of the restaurants.

Crowdfunding Film of our succesful campaign.

Chef Rick (Restaurant As) feeds the garden with
self-made compost.

Circular Restaurants and Circular Office Buildings.

One of the proud users of a Le Compostier worm hotel is Rudolf Brands from the restaurant of Circl on the Zuidas. And also the restaurant of the Tropenhotel is composting their green waste to feed the vegetable gardens at the offices of KIT (Royal Institute of the Tropics). 

Its great to see that more and more restaurants and also offices are requesting worm hotels to start composting their own organic waste. 

Worm Hotel at KIT
Oosterpark - Amsterdam.

Worm Hotel at Circl
Zuidas - Amsterdam.

Worm Hotel at restaurant Bret.
Sloterdijk - Amsterdam

Harvesting the Vermicompost.

Last week we assisted the chefs of Restaurant As to harvest their own vermicompost. We harvested three wheelbarrows full of nicely screened compost. It continues to be a miracle to see how much material the worm hotels are digesting and transforming into the black gold vermicompost. The compost was than used by Rick and Cityplot members Helder and Susanne in the garden of Restaurant As. 

Cityplotmembers Helder and Susanne use the
Vermicompost to feed the soil of the garden at
Restaurant As.

Grow food in the City.

Cityplot is taking care of Restaurant As' garden for some years now and the kitchen uses the produce from this garden to make their dishes. The restaurant is using produce from local farmers next to the herbs and veggies that come from their own garden. 

Growing food locally in the city might become more and more important in the near future and to compost locally to feed the soils will help make this possible. 

Organisations like Cityplot organise workshops on how to grow food in the city, in communal gardens, on your balcony or even on your rooftop. 

It is also possible to grow food together in organised structures such as CSA's (Community Supported Agriculture). Amsterdam has now a few running CSA's that you can join to grow and buy your locally grown food. Cityplot runs Pluk! at the FruittuinvanWest. Another nice initiative is the Groente Amsterdammer from Kasper Hoex.

If you want to grow your own food on your balcony or in a community garden it would be great to make your own vermicompost. To do so you can make a Wormbucket, build a wooden DIY Worm Hotel or start a Community Composting project with your neighbours in your street.

Local Wood - Global Wood.

Wood from StadsHout.

The Le Compostier worm hotels are made out of FSC certified wood. But sometimes we get our wood from the city. Trees that are cut due to illness or restructuring of neighbourhoods are given to the foundation StadsHout (CityWood). StadsHout cuts the trees into boards and sells those to designers and manifacturers of furnitures. 

We are very happy to be able to use such a fine material as wood for our composting furnitures, and to be able to inspire lot's of people to start composting and to take care of the soil. But we also need to make sure we continue to grow back our forrests. 

That is why Le Compostier is now supporting Trees For All and will donate two trees for each new worm hotel that we build. One tree will be planted in the Netherlands and the other tree will be given to a treeplanting project in Bolivia.