Could not resist the title. This post is really just a quick note about the impressive sustainability model of a fancy South African hotel, according to Reuters:

Cape Town’s oldest and most famous hotel — a pink temple to pampering where visiting celebrities are welcomed by doormen in traditional colonial-era pith helmets — has its own worm farm to help slash waste and, ultimately, tackle climate change.

“This may seem simplistic but it was simply the right thing to do. We’re taking responsibility and actually producing something of value out of the waste,” Sharon Baharavi, of the five-star Mount Nelson, told Reuters.

[…]

The hotel is processing about 20 percent of its organic waste through the worm farm but hopes to extend that to 100 percent within the next nine months, as the earthworms reproduce and the farm expands.

Under the right conditions, two worms can become a million in just one year.

The project may also help South Africa work toward a goal of stopping waste going to landfill sites by 2022 by encouraging people to find other ways to deal with refuse.

“Without a doubt, organic waste on landfill sites is what’s producing a huge bulk of our methane gas that’s contributing significantly to climate change,” [environmental activist Mary] Murphy said.

As externalities become more interesting to people, or come within the sights of regulators, I wonder what else they will try to tackle (pun not intended):

Some worms can digest pollution. Scientists are figuring out if the worms could be used as toxic-soil detectors, the way canaries were used as poisonous-air detectors in mines.