Worming Their Way to Innovation

For Brendan Holleck '25, fishing is a chance to commune with nature and enjoy the serenity of a picture-perfect stretch of waterway. Unfortunately, his one and only hobby often burdens the aquatic environment, the very thing anglers set out to enjoy. 

As anyone who has strolled through the aisles of a big-box sporting goods store can attest, retailers offer endless colorful plastic options to entice a bite. Most, Holleck says, cannot be recycled and aren't biodegradable, so when they're lost to an errant cast or a snag on a submerged log, that's where they'll stay. 

"The artificial lure market is approximately $700 million, and most of it is non-recyclable soft plastics that can end up sitting in a landfill or at the bottom of rivers, lakes, and oceans," Holleck, a biology major enrolled in Haverford's accelerated master’s program with the University of Pennsylvania, says. "That's been on my mind as someone who has lost their fair share of lures."

Those figures inspired Holleck to seek a greener option and a partnership with Avary Lanier BMC '24 to develop GreenBaits, a self-contained worm farm and composting system, supported through the Haverford Innovations Program (HIP) Summer Incubator. The program provides teams of students and recent alums with financial backing to address a problem or need of their choosing. With GreenBaits, Holleck and Lanier, who met in Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Talia Young's "Fish & Community" class last year, have evolved an existing product and process that aims to provide anglers with free, wriggling bait while encouraging more people to start composting their food waste at home. 

For most, the notion of a backyard compost pile will conjure the image of a steamy heap of leaves, dead plants, grass clippings, and assorted food scraps that, when properly tended to, eventually break down into a potent garden amendment. That's why gardeners often refer to quality compost as "black gold." It's a relatively simple process of accelerating and managing decay, but Holleck and Lanier say research reveals that nearly 72% of Americans don't compost at home. 

That's not for lack of interest, the duo contends. A survey they conducted this summer revealed that most of those they asked are interested in composting but don't know how to. They're also worried about potential odors, pests, and space constraints. 

A much more straightforward and cleaner alternative, worm composting, is the subject of Holleck and Lanier's vision for GreenBaits. Unlike traditional composting, hundreds of worms living in plastic towers that can be kept indoors can quickly digest an average home's organic food scraps. The process reduces the amount of methane released into the atmosphere and provides anglers with a renewable supply of natural bait. It's also a much faster process that still outputs a high-quality fertilizer called worm castings. 

"This is compost that works for you, not just you working for your compost," Hollenback says. 

Holleck admits that adding worms to the mix introduces a new set of concerns, mainly the fear of hundreds of worms escaping into a home. But he says the design of GreenBait's worm bin provides a design that provides a secure system and sleek aesthetics that has been drumming up a lot of interest. While worm composting setups can be found on Amazon for anywhere between $60 and $150, they're more function than form, Holleck says. 

After hours of comparison testing and prototype development, GreenBaits reached out to Richard Pospíšil, a student at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, to use one of his existing 3D designs and are bringing their experiences to the table to improve it. Holleck and Lanier also developed the foundation of a partner app, which will include setup instructions, a basic care guide, feeding reminders, and even instructions for people to build DIY worm bins based on the team's earlier prototype, which only requires a drill and three five-gallon buckets. 

"We hope this app can take the guesswork and endless Google searching out of worm composting and address the concern we saw in the survey, which is people choosing not to compost simply because they feel they don't have enough information to," says Lanier, whose father worm composts at home in Birmingham, Alabama.  

While it's undoubtedly a niche subject, there's interest — and money — in worm composting. Mary Applehof's how-to guide, Worms Eat My Garbage, has sold more than 200,000 copies, and startup Subpod, which sells outdoor worm bins that are buried in backyards and gardens, turned into a $16 million business in less than four years of operation. Through its stand-out aesthetics, Holleck hopes to tap into that market through a combination of direct sales, app subscriptions, and affiliate marketing. GreenBaits, he says, has already discovered an interested party in Buckeye Organics, one of the largest online worm retailers in the nation. 

"One of the great things about worm composting compared to other methods is that, at the end of the day, you get compost that is better than better than commercial fertilizers," Holleck says. "You also get worms, which is a bonus for fishing or if you have animals at home to feed. There's a lot to love here."