Worm Composting Right in Your Kitchen?
Worms composting food right in your kitchen sounds kind of scary, right? In this strange but compelling all-in-one kitchen concept, drained water is reused, other waste is a recycled and energy consumption is reduced. The idea is that the flow of cooking becomes fundamentally integrated with the natural cycles of the environment – herb garden meets trash compactor meets space-age style.
EcoKook (made by Faltazi) is less a conventional kitchen design and more a micro-ecosystem and/or modern science experiment answering the question: how do we make a home (starting with one key room) that is ecological, economical and extremely useful? It is also an amazing in-your-face way to illustrate just how food production and consumption impacts the world beyond merely taking trips to the grocery store.
The designers drew on large-scale, real-life system examples for their design inspiration – from civil engineering (lock, dam and irrigation systems) to environmental engineering (entire self-contained ecosystems).
Seriously, this is green cooking on all fronts. From the sustainable sink down to the under-sink waste-water reservoir, there is a clear and programmed path for liquids. From the literally-green potted plants above to green-painted cabinet and storage spaces below, everything solid about this design says ‘eco-friendly’ inside and out. Of course, the inside systems are where the hidden magic happens – from living worms and layers of soil being actively composted to water and solid waste filters of various kinds and scales.
Beyond merely being green, though, this concept is extremely future-thinking and highly functional – it saves time, energy and resources that cost money and increase stress for cooks. It also teaches people directly about where food comes from – and where it goes. Oh, yes, and the entire thing looks clean, cool and modern – even if you forget about the entire environmental aspect of it all. Is worm composting indoors the wave of the future? It’s hard to say whether the general public could get over their squeamishness enough to accept it, but we can dream.
