CINCINNATI — Finding sustainable solutions can be overwhelming but Katie Jacobs found that one helpful creature is wiggling around right under our feet.
Jacobs, a recent college graduate, was working at the University of Kentucky in an agricultural lab.
"I wanted to come back to Cincinnati and I couldn't find any jobs in the agricultural research space," she said, "And so I was looking at all these problems in the world and I wasn't really finding many solutions that solved them or dealt with them."
She decided to take the first step and in doing so, found a passion project hiding just beneath the surface.
"15% of the methane emissions in the US comes from throwing away organics in the landfills. And it's like, if we just throw things away differently, or compost them, we're creating this beautiful soil amendment and we're getting rid of those emissions," She said. "So it's kind of like an easy win-win."
Digging into the world of vermicomposting meant she'd need — worms. Lots of them.
"Worms themselves can eat anything. Literally any organic matter. They can eat paper, they can eat vegetation," she said, "They're digesting the food, they're coding it with microbes."
She started off relatively small, composting in her own apartment.
"I started with 40 pounds of worms," she said.
Those worms soon outgrew the space, so Jacobs moved them into a basement. Now, she's expanded yet again and turned her pet project into a backyard business.
She calls it Back2TheDirt.
"I'm trying to help people who don't have the space necessary to compost or the time. So (clients) are filling five-gallon buckets for me of food waste and then I'm either picking it up from their house or picking it up from one of our drop-off locations and then bringing it back. And then they get a portion of the worm castings back," she said.
So — what's worm castings?
"It's the nicer word for worm poo," she said."It is stable organic matter. It's non toxic, so you just can throw it right on to any of your plants," she said.
These days, Jacobs and her worm friends are composting thousands of pounds every month for about 65 clients.
Intercepting trash on its way to the landfill and giving it new life. And while she says selling some on the idea is still a work in progress, she's confident composting will worm its way into your heart.
"Hopefully, in the future, I would love to see Cincinnati where we're all composting," she said.
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