Meet Atiyah Bagha, Sudbury's 'compost queen'

22-year-old Atiyah Bagha's push to bring composting to her university campus has earned her recognition across the country.

Bagha, originally from Sudbury, recently won the Gift to Canada Contest, run by the youth charity Me to We, highlighting young Canadians making a difference.

Her journey started when she realized the University of Regina didn't have a full composting program.

"There had been initiatives started by students before," she said. "But those movements slowly withered away as students graduated or moved away."

Enter the worm

Bagha initially pushed for an industrial composter on campus, but changed her approach to something more small-scale.

That's when Bagha decided to push the idea of vermicomposting, or composting with worms.

Bagha kept a plastic container filled with worms under her bed. She said they could compost a banana peel in about two weeks.

"They eat anything from veggie scraps to bread," she said. "They're versatile."

"And the castings the worms produce actually kill pathogens," she said. "It's the perfect fertilizer."

The university has since adopted a composting program, Bagha said. A third-party contractor removes compost from the campus.

"The program grew to where they now compost 300 lbs of coffee grounds per week," Bagha said. "And that's only from one building."

Bagha, who is attending university in Dublin, Ireland, for veterinary medicine, hopes that even small changes can positively affect the future.

"I am hoping that Canada will take this up and take steps to live greener. We only have one planet, we're all in this together," she said.