Are worms killing the planet...

Kudos to Andrew Sullivan for finding this.....you never know what environmentalists will blame next...

Worm composting could be doing more harm than good to the environment, according to research in Germany.

"Worms produce a significant amount of greenhouse gases. Recent research done by German scientists has found that worms produced a third of nitrous oxide gases when used for composting," an expert was quoted as saying.

In an interview with a leading renewable resources journal, Jim Frederickson, senior research fellow at Britain`s Open Universities faculty of technology, said the German research showed that worm composting has deleterious effects on the environment that should be considered more seriously.

Worms naturally produce nitrous oxide gases when they are put into the process of composting.

Worms can be used for home grown composting or commercial composting and are typically red worms. They are used to recycle food scraps and other organic material into valuable soil worm compost, otherwise known as vermicompost. This compost can then be used to grow plants.

"We have concentrated on getting waste out of landfill and into worm composting systems but they can actually produce more greenhouse gases than landfill sites produce," Frederickson told Materials Recycling Week, a leading publication for the recycling and waste-management industry.