SAN ANTONIO – Christiana Wren Rodgers loves to talk about the thousands of red wriggler worms she keeps in her backyard. She feeds them only the best scraps that come right out of the Alamodome’s kitchen.
“We have been consistently picking up about 23 to 25 buckets from the [Alamodome] every week [since September],” Rodgers said.
More than four tons of scraps have been collected and distributed through the Facebook group San Antonio Composting Project.
“This is what people would call trash, but it is gold for the garden,” she said.
Like Rodgers, many gardeners are interested in making their soil more rich.
“These little animals are devouring food waste [at] such a large capacity that we could scale this up,” she explains.
The project got started thanks to her friend Kevan Arzani, who worked at the Alamodome at the time.
Arzani would often take leftover food to help feed homeless people.
“Collecting as much as I could carry on my person after a ten hour day, and then [I would] bring it home to feed the homeless,” Arzani said.
Rodgers says that much more can be done with scraps instead of filling up landfills.
“There’s about 50% of what we throw away can be composted,” Rodgers said.
Staff at the Alamodome have handed over buckets of scraps, which have been distributed to individuals all around the community.
“It’s a good feeling knowing that it’s not wasted,” Arzani said.
The group is reaching out to other food handlers interested in donating their compost to the group and organizing volunteers to help spread the scraps to other areas of town.
Rodgers says there are plenty of people in the group who can help those interested in starting their own red wriggler composting garden.
A little bit of trial and error goes into it, but it’s not too bad, she says.
“I encourage backyard composting. Even if you’re not a gardener,” Rodgers said.