Who knew creepy crawlers could help an apartment building or a condominium complex go green?

Cathy Nesbitt, owner of Cathy’s Crawly Composters, took home the new environmental business award of the year last week for her vermicomposting venture at the East Gwillimbury Spirit of Business awards at Silver Lakes Golf and Country Club.

The new award defines leadership in an area of growing importance, Roberta Fox said, the gala’s MC and owner of Fox Group Telecom Consulting, one of the sponsoring companies.

“(Ms Nesbitt) has shown how the lowly worm can help the environment,” Ms Fox said.

Ms Nesbitt accepted her award and asked her business peers to think of worms as the romantic type.

“Worms have five hearts. In a pound of worms, there could be four or five thousand hearts,” she joked. “So, next Valentine’s Day, get a pound of worms.”

But worms were not always crawling for Ms Nesbitt’s affection.

“I was afraid of worms before I started the business,” she said. “They’re creepy and slimy. Now, I think they’re magic.”

The adamant gardener and composter started her wormy business in 2002 when she noticed the group home in which she worked didn’t have a composting facility.

“You connect what you do,” she said. “If you have lots of food scraps, you have a lot of waste.”

Vermicomposting is an on-site solution for composting, especially in areas not being serviced by the green bin program, such as apartments, condominiums and schools, she said.

Every day, red worms eat half their weight in food scraps and shredded paper. Ms Nesbitt recommends a two-to-one ratio, where there is two pounds of worms for every pound of food. The harvested castings is like black gold for the soil, Ms Nesbitt said.

“They produce earth’s finest fertilizer,” she said. “They return the nutrients and the goodness back into the soil.”

This is the first year a business has been recognized for its unique environmental achievement, said East Gwillimbury Chamber president, Cindy Thiele.

Winners of the 2008 East Gwillimbury business awards are:
Excellence in small business: Matthew Clulow, Clulow and Associates
Excellence in large business: Craig Evans, Pheasant Run Golf Club
Young entrepreneur of the year: Dino Kotsikas, Atlas Landscaping
Business community service award: Sharon Bates, Tangles Hair Salon
Best new venture/start up: Dr. Nancy Mehi, Mehi Veterinary Mobile
Environmental business of the year: Cathy Nesbitt, Cathy’s Crawly Composters
Entrepreneur of the year: Kim Mortson, Body Design

Alicia examines the Red Wiggler Worms in Cathy Nesbitt's hand at Beatrice Strong Public School February 21 as students learned about worm composting.

On the website of Cathy's Crawly Composters is a cartoon titled "Getting Into Heaven in the 21st Century.

Governor Palin's Email got hacked...Is Yours Any Safer?

Governor Sarah Palin's Yahoo Email account got hacked. That means someone got into it. Someone who shouldn't have. And apparently it was relatively easy (especially for someone motivated to do harm) and involved using Yahoo's password reset feature which asks for such information as your Birthdate.

Lesson 1: Don't use Email services like Yahoo, Hotmail or GMail for sensitive or business communications! Use a proper Email service...like your Business Email.

When I set-up passwords for my Clients, I usually get a look of disbelief when they see something like "3oL0B~vm$x". "How am I ever going to remember that?!"