Last Wednesday, Michael Mobbs and Zoe Wang arranged and attended and helped Melbourne City Council lead the first, and successful, community engagement meeting at 18 Pence Lane Cafe to discuss the new Worms at Work Project in Melbourne City.

The Worms at Work trial will test design options in the streets to turn food waste into fresh growth by integrating street furniture with public worm-farming and composting.

Michael was one of the winners of the Council’s 2024 Fishermans Bend Digital Innovation Challenge, alongside Zoe Wang of the Upsoil Collective. The two aim to create a design that incorporates a seat for people to sit on with composting and worm farming to divert food waste in public furniture in an effort to create community and ownership of food waste solutions..

Michael will begin gardening with locals in April at Fishermans Bend who have volunteered to be ‘community champions’ for the project. These community champions are crucial for the success of this project to ensure the project will be long-lasting, used by, and meaningful for everyone who lives or works there.

Anyone who is interested in signing up either to garden or to know more can use this link and help make this trial succeed.

There will also be more community meetings and engagement in the future.

Through the balance of the project to November, 2025, Michael will work with local residents and businesses to develop a new compost design.

This design will use similar design principles to Coolseats, which he was been developing for the past 10 years and are in the footpath gardens of Chippendale.

These Coolseats are an Australian-made product that incorporate a seat, composter, and garden in one, all the while excluding rats and bad odours, and being stylish and elegant. Coolseats are currently used and enjoyed by members of the Chippendale neighborhood in Sydney. The new designs will be developed with local contribution to ensure the trial compost options would work for them and for the Melbourne City Council’s Street furniture repertoire.

***• A single garden bed coolseat fits on an apartment balcony, other small spaces***

***• A double garden bed coolseat grows more food or other plants***

Interested in learning more about the project and getting involved?

Check out the Melbourne City Council website for the project, here:

https://participate.melbourne.vic.gov.au/emerging-tech-testbed/worms-at-work-pilot

Want to know more about other compost projects involving schools, communities, cafes? Checkout the linktree to learn more https://linktr.ee/MichaelMobbs or scan the QR code of the image below.

Lucy Bamford

Intern with Sustainable House