Effective Microorganisms for Composting

Microbes touted for composting:
by TIM HIGGINS of the Tribune's staff -- Aug 12, 2000

Japanese professor sees boon for environment.
It might look like nothing but a pail of garbage.
Leigh Lockhart is co-owner of The Main Squeeze, the only restaurant in Columbia to recycle food waste with a new process that uses microbes.The restaurant's refuse is trucked to MU's South Farm, where the treatment helps the waste decay faster and without odor...

The creator of the process, Japanese professor Teruo Higa, is in Columbia speaking at MU this weekend. Higa kicked off the series of seminars, sponsored by Sustainable Community Development, yesterday morning by talking to a group of roughly 25 scientists, farmers and environmentalists from around the state and country about his process of composting and neutralizing food waste, trash and feces...

Higa touts the treatment, which he calls EM - Effective Microbial - as a cure-all for environments damaged by pollutants. He said the treatment can be used in lakes, rivers and fields. 'It begins to clean up the sludge and other pollutants,' he said through an interpreter...