Worms gobble leftovers from legislative cafeteria

General Assembly finds squirmy way to conserve energy

RALEIGH -- Brian Rosa sticks his hand into a new trash bin behind the Legislative Building and retrieves a clump of dirt with scores of worms oozing out, ready to try a new place for eats.

The red wigglers -- 50,000 of them -- live in a special bin, shipped in to eat 25 percent of the food left over from the legislative cafeteria.

The worms, which can eat half their weight daily, excrete waste that seeps to the bottom of the bin as compost for fertilizing plants around the building.

They'll even eat paper

"They can eat office paper. They love cardboard," said Rosa, a state environmental organic recycling specialist, as cafeteria workers poured leftovers into the 4-by-10-foot container for the first time last week. "All government facilities could have something like this large enough to handle their food waste."

The initiative is the latest effort by the General Assembly to reduce waste and electricity consumption.

"I think they're on the front end, ahead of a lot of folks," said Larry Shirley, head of the state Energy Office. "I'd say in the scope of things, the legislature has stepped out and has been a leader."

That commitment has given lawmakers more credence among environmentalists as they passed legislation this year requiring electric utilities to generate a portion of their power from renewable fuels and energy efficiency, and phasing out hog waste lagoons. The General Assembly also agreed to require other state buildings to follow their lead and reduce energy consumption by 20 percent by 2010.

"It all goes back to practicing what you preach," said Christa Wagner, a lobbyist for the state chapter of the Sierra Club. "Ultimately, it's going to show how easy is it to save money by designing green."

Many of the measures can be attributed to longtime Senate leader Marc Basnight, a Dare County Democrat, who has made conservation and energy efficiency a priority -- a byproduct of his coastal upbringing and what he sees as the limited supply of natural resources.

He was the one who asked building administrators to test using worms instead of shipping the waste to an outside compost operation.

"You're sitting in a building here that has made huge changes," Basnight said during a recent interview. "We're slowly getting that done. Not as quickly as I want, but it's going to move much more aggressively."

All part of a plan

Over the past five years, workers have replaced about 3,500 light fixtures with fluorescent bulbs that use a fraction of the wattage required of incandescent bulbs, said Tony Goldman, the administrative services director for both buildings.

These changes and renovations have resulted in a 10 percent drop in electricity use at the Legislative Building, where the House and Senate meet, and a 20 percent decline at the adjoining Legislative Office Building. The reductions equal about $60,000 less spent on electricity.

In the rest rooms at the Legislative Building, motion sensors keep lights off until someone enters. Devices on faucets will reduce water usage by about 80 percent, or 300,000 gallons annually, Goldman said.

These efforts make a significant difference in energy reduction while setting a strong example, said Neal Elliott with the nonprofit Washington-based American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.

"It's hard to motivate individuals and companies to step up if they don't see their public leaders leading on this issue," Elliott said. "This is real stuff."

The 50,000 schoolchildren who tour the Legislative Building annually learn about the conservation measures.

A plaque looks out over the field where workers installed three 18,000-gallon underground cisterns in 2004. They collect rainwater and condensation from the building's 47 air conditioning units and use it for watering the lawn and plants.

Similar plaques will teach students about the worms and a new project in which solar panels will be installed on the roof of Legislative Office Building to produce hot water.

Energy efficiency efforts across state government have generated cost savings of $66 million over the past four years, Shirley said. But North Carolina's public buildings still have a long way to go reach the "green" levels of many in the private sector.

"We would not call the legislature a model green building," Wagner said, but "there is probably no better demonstration project for sustainable design than the people's house."