Troubled by the world-wide financial crisis, I decided to compost shredded
US currency in my home worm bin in order to meditate on the economy and
the gap between what money represents and what it actually is. I acquired
about $2000 worth of shredded currency and put my pet worms to work. Over
six months the worms consumed, digested, and transformed the paper into
dirt. During the course of the project dozens of worms protested, fleeing
the toxic assets, only to end up dead on my kitchen floor. At the end
of April I finally harvested the "black gold." I left it in
a ceramic pot in the garden. By June the pot was showing "green sprouts."
Every year the New York Federal Reserve deposits three million pounds
of destroyed currency in landfill. Landfills are the second largest human
generated source of methane emissions in the USA.
We'd only need about 17,000 New Yorkers with worm bins to keep pace with
the Fed's garbage. How's that for Green Jobs?
You can view the progress of the project from January-June on my blog
As the Worms Turn.
