I felt like an archaeologist this morning as I scraped away layers of vermicompost in an effort to unearth the remains of my two coffee cups!

Needless to say, it’s been awhile since my last update! I figured today would be as good a day as any to wrap up the challenge once and for all. I had no idea it was day 75 until I counted forward from our last update, but it definitely sounds like a good number to finish with.

Not too surprisingly, there isn’t much left – basically just the plastic liner that comes inside each cardboard coffee cup. As you’ll see below, one of the cups does still have a little cardboard on the bottom, but that’s about it.

Here is a close-up of one of the liners as I dislodge it from the rest of the bin contents

As mentioned, one of the cups still had a little bit of cardboard left on the bottom. In case you are wondering, the small, round, yellowish objects are worm eggs. There seem to be quite a few of them in the bin.

I took a few close-up shots of red worms while I was at it – this one turned out quite nicely! (you know you are a true worm nerd when you say things like that!)

All in all it was a fun little experiment. To be totally honest, I did know what the outcome would be (since I’ve composted coffee cups before), but I figured it would be fun to document the process (with photos) on the blog.

I can’t remember if I mentioned in already, but for my next challenge I’m going to attempt to see how quickly red worms can reproduce. I’ll get a new bin ready, then simply add a small number of adult worms (5 or fewer). Like the CC Challenge, I will be sure to write periodic blog updates. Should definitely be interesting!

By the way, in case you’ve missed any or all of my Coffee Cup Challenge posts, here are the rest of them:

Coffee Cup Challenge – Day 0
Coffee Cup Challenge – Day 6
Coffee Cup Challenge – Day 17
Coffee Cup Challenge – Day 33
Coffee Cup Challenge – Day 36