On a sunny afternoon on the Memorial Quad Lawn, University students could be seen leisurely reading books, working on summer suntans and making worm bins for composting.
The University’s Slow Food Club ended their “D.I.Y. Workshop Series” on Wednesday with a tutorial on how to make worm bins. @@http://slowfooduo.wordpress.com/events-calendar/@@
“Slow Food’s motto is ‘Good, clean, fair food.’ The whole idea is to get to know where your food comes from and supporting local producers and food that is grown responsibly,” said Slow Food Club member Aloura DiGiallonardo. @@http://uoregon.edu/findpeople/person/Aloura*DiGiallonardo@@
While many people believe that eating from local and responsible sources can be expensive, the club is focused on making healthy eating affordable.
“Our campus chapter is interested in making good, clean, fair food affordable and accessible to people on a college student’s budget, which isn’t easy if you don’t know what you are doing,” DiGiallonardo said.
With this idea in mind, the club developed their first workshop series, which included lessons on making sourdough yeast starters and farmer’s cheese, pickling vegetables and making worm bins for composting.
DiGiallonardo estimates that it cost her $40 to buy the supplies for all of the workshops, which were meant to facilitate a maximum of 20 people each.
“Worm bins are cheaper than buying compost,” club member Pierce Kennedy said. “I’m not an expert on worm bins, but I started one very easily. It cost about $4 and most of it was free.”
The Slow Food Club also wanted to dissolve the myth of a learning curve surrounding sustainable and healthy eating. Aside from a basic knowledge of a few key tips, like making sure the bottom layer of the bin is always moist and that there are plenty of holes in the container, making worm bins is an extremely user-friendly and easy process. It took Kennedy a mere five minutes from start to finish to create a bin made out of an old Lego container.
Kennedy says that aside from the healthy properties of compost, like its high content of nitrogen, one of the biggest benefits is promoting environmental sustainability.
“The point is that instead of throwing your food away and using gas for a garbage company to pick it up, which is often completely useless, you can make it into compost, which feeds your garden and prevents trash from ending up in a landfill.”
The Slow Food Club plans on continuing their workshop series next year after getting positive reviews and a number of requests for more tutorials.