May 1, 2025

Our latest recruitment policy – worms

Look away now if you don’t like worms!
 
Our colleagues have long been the driving force to improve sustainability at Eumar Technology. But I have to say I did not see the latest colleague initiative and recruitment drive coming. A wormery with our new company colleagues – Lumbricus terrestris. Our common earth worm.
 
Food waste is one of the biggest contributors to ecological damage on the planet. If food loss and waste were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gasses. Food waste accounts for 6-10% of all greenhouse gas emissions – so we all need to take steps, and as an SME, we naturally have a role to play.
 
Many of us have food waste programmes at home through our local authorities and often larger organisations with staff restaurants will pay to sort their waste. But how many smaller organisations will incur the cost of waste separation or know what to do with their food waste to contribute to sustainability?
 
With over five million small businesses in the UK, if we each had a simple food recycling programme, imagine the impact we could have.
 
Over the past two years, Eumar Technology and our sister company Ubersorb have focused on improving sustainability around our processes, supply chains and product development. We have also seen our suppliers and clients embedding change. But we have seen little across the board in how we, as a global workforce, dispose of our food in the SME workplace. The surprising thing is food waste recycling can be cheap, relatively easy to do and effective so within reach of SMEs. And you have an end product…compost.
 
So, what have we done and how did we do it?
We are only a month or two into running a ‘corporate wormery’, so we still have a lot to learn.  We are also not alone in acting and there are some incredible further developed case studies from our peers delivering real change that we continue to learn from.  But our journey with food waste started with our sustainability lead and former biology teacher Serena.
 
We have provided our colleagues with fresh fruit for a while which results in natural wastage and until now, much of that waste went to landfill. We wanted to change that and looked at how to use it more effectively – composting was a natural solution.
 
While we can pay for a service to pick up the food waste, that has its own CO2 impact. So, Serena set about looking for a solution and having already had experience of wormeries, it became a natural choice. Now, a few months later, it is up and running and we are seeing our first compost. And it doesn’t stop there – worms can also digest shredded bits of paper so it helps with information security too!
 
A wormery was the obvious choice so the challenge was finding the appropriate size and ensuring we committed to do it effectively. What did we do and how feasible is it for others to join our wormery SME peers?
 
Finding the right size wormery: We looked for the largest wormery we could find that met our needs and one that we felt would not be too ambitious. This is not an expensive step to take and is certainly more valuable than a contractor taking food away. There is an initial financial commitment but after that it remains cost minimal and enhances workplace communication and engagement.
 
Promoting the process internally: For the wormery to work, we needed all colleagues on board, so we have worked to promote the food waste programme within the organisation.
 
Understanding what is needed: Like all workplaces, you must cultivate the best environment to work in; our latest colleagues are no different. For the worms to do their thing, we needed to understand the right environment and roughly the right temperature. Worms do not like extreme weather, hot or cold, so need to be kept in a sheltered place or indoors so we have found them a location that suits them.
 
Understanding the process: This is the exciting part. A wormery is truly a circular economy for food. Much like a compost bin, you put food in and out comes compost – only with many worms to help move things forward. Worms start from the bottom of the wormery and work upwards so once you have the worms and begin to add food, with some patience, respiration and growth takes over and you begin to see compost. We are now starting to add further layers to our wormery as our new worm colleagues become more productive!
 
What difference have we seen?
We are still early in the process, but we are seeing results already.

• The novelty value of a wormery has continued to stimulate excitement and commitment of colleagues to support new sustainability initiatives within Eumar Technology and Ubersorb. Colleague commitment will always be at the heart of our sustainability activities so projects such as the wormery help that dedication to a company future that is as environmentally sustainable as possible.
• Our reduction in food waste is clear and sizeable, although we are not measuring its quantities or impact on financial cost now. That is to come. However, further education of our colleagues to think more environmentally about their own food waste will have wider benefits beyond our company and into the community.
• We have long invested in local flora and fauna around our communities and have now begun our own raised beds on our Herefordshire site. Our first quantity of worm-developed compost will be used on those beds to grow our plants, whether for staff use at work or at home or to improve the biodiversity of the local wildlife. So, a complete Eumar Technology circular economy at little cost.

As mentioned, we are early in the process of our wormery, but it is another part of our sustainability jigsaw. This project is also an important example of thinking outside the ISO14001 box and doing things a little bit differently.

We know that an empowered and engaged workforce is a force for good in organisations of any size, and in particular SMEs. Yes, activities like the wormery and other sustainability initiatives are good for colleague engagement. But that engagement, energy for change and empowerment has had significant benefits in our wider operations like investment, improvements to our product development and manufacturing. Over the past 12 months, as we have transformed our business, we have relied heavily on our colleagues, and they have been at the core of our change process. ISO14001 has had a major positive impact on our BAU and that will continue.

We can and will measure the impact of our latest colleagues’ work in the wormery. But we know from experience so much of their hard work will be felt beyond the compost and food waste reduction. It will continue to impact positively on how we operate and grow as a small business that increasingly belongs on the global stage.

Photo credit: Photo by sippakorn yamkasikorn on Unsplash