River Care Programme (RCP)

Part of the thousands of black soldier flies that are kept at Aquavermiponic’s green house at Jalan Kuching-Serian in Kuching. — Bernama

KUCHING: For the past four years, Amelia Lim Wen Ching had never given up on the idea of finding the best way to manage organic wastes and produce top quality pet food.

More interestingly, Amelia, 38, founder of Aquavermiponic Sdn Bhd, does not have any experience and basic skills in the field, but her tireless efforts in reducing kitchen wastes has finally paid off.

Sharing her experience with Bernama, Amelia, previously from the corporate sector, said Aquavermiponic deals with food waste management aimed at reducing food wastes through the vermicomposting process.

Amelia, dubbed the ‘Worm Lady’, said via the vermicompost application, Aquavermiponic uses two types of worms, namely superworms and black soldier fly larvae to turn organic wastes into very high quality compost, which leads to less dependency on mechanisation, fertiliser and even water.

“Super worms require high supervision in terms of hygiene in order to thrive healthily. For the black soldier fly, these larvae grow well in our tropical country and are the best protein source alternative for animal feed.

“All our worms are fed with our special formula to make sure that the vermicompost are of top quality,” said Amelia, who holds a Bachelor in Social Science (Communication Studies) degree from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS).

According to Amelia, at present, Aquavermiponic produces organic compost besides supplying super worms to the food and beverage (F&B) sector within Kuching City, as part of their exotic menus.

Amelia added that 10 suppliers would deliver organic wastes to them every day.

“Organic or kitchen wastes can be varied as they include rejected vegetables or fruits. We manage an average of 500kg of organic wastes daily.

“Aquavermiponic has a farm located at Jalan Kuching-Serian and we also carry out contract farming with few individuals who have been trained by us,” she said.

“Currently we also collaborate with UNIMAS to get interns to do research on agricultural feed project. After some observation this year, we managed to get some positive data in order to run a few more researches on talapias and empurau; tiger prawns and mud crabs.

“The results had been quite positive, so probably by next year we can come out with an agricultural feed,” she said.

Amelia said to upscale the black soldier fly larvae, Aquavermiponic is starting a new farm on a four-acre site in Matang here.

“I managed to get some investors to set up the farm which is geared to be the biggest insect farming site in Sarawak,” she said, adding that she welcomed assistance from any related agencies or the state government to help educate more people on vermicompost. — Bernama

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