Woooorrrrmmmsss… 🪱

We’re often left with loads of spent mushroom blocks once they’ve finished fruiting. While there are a few things we could do with them, the route we’re leaning into right now is turning them into mycelium-rich worm bins.

Why worm bins? Simple. All of our spaces have close ties with local community gardens, and there’s really no such thing as a garden with too many worms. Making good use of our leftover substrates just makes sense, especially as we continue experimenting with new growing mixes made from recycled coffee waste and spent brewing grain through the BrewCycle project, where local waste streams are transformed into food for the community.

To make this happen, we’ve built the worm bins from repurposed 1100-litre plastic containers, creating plenty of worm real estate. With two now set up, one lives at @carltonclubmcr and the other at @stmargaretscentrenplayingfield, embedding the system directly into spaces that already support growing, sharing, and community activity.

These bins are being developed in collaboration with Engino and together, we’re exploring how regenerative systems like this can support both environmental outcomes and meaningful opportunities for people involved.

The worm bins become a natural next step in the process. Worms break down the spent substrate into nutrient-rich compost, ready to be returned to the soil and used in community gardens and growing spaces.

At the heart of it, this is about circularity. We want our mushrooms to be grown with our communities (volunteers), for our communities (free meals), from our communities (waste), and put back into our communities (soil).

Because you really don’t get much more circular than that.