Journal of Microbiology Research 2014, 4(2): 54-67 DOI: 10.5923/j.microbiology.20140402.03 Enhanced Vermicomposting for Combination of Organic Waste through Subsequent Treatment with Selected Microorganisms Shamini K. * , Fauziah S. H. Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Abstract The high volume of waste dumped per day leads to serious environmental issues. Among the issues is the generation of methane via anaerobic degradation of waste that contributes towards global warming. There are numerous options in minimizing organic waste disposed into landfills. This includes composting and vermicomposting. This research is aimed to investigate the possibility of treating selected organic wastes via vermicomposting using formulated microbial cocktail. Preliminary treatments were conducted to determine the degradation rate via vermicomposting of selected organic wastes namely spent tea, sugar cane bagasse and banana stem. For this purpose, 1 kg of the organic wastes were placed in plastic containers (50cm x 15cm x 25cm) where 10 Eudrillus Eugeniae average size of 5.5cm were introduced. No worms were added into the control set-ups. Three microbial consortia namely M, 3I1 and 3I3 (consisted of Basillusweihenstephanensis, Basilluspumillus, Pseudomonas alcaligenes, Flavobacteriumjohnsoniae, Staphylococcus hominis and Bacillus licheniformis) of were added as the enhancer. With or without the application of 3I3 consortium has the largest difference compared to other experimental setups. It managed to enhance vermicomposting of combination of all three selected organic wastes in equal proportion by approximately 64% resulting with a degradation rate of 2.0 x 10 -1 kg per day. The percentage of reduction for carbon to nitrogen ratio indicated 50% for the same combination of wastes in just 5 days. This results indicates that the microbial consortium prepared via this research were able to enhance of the degradation of organic wastes namely sugar cane bagasse, spent tea and banana stem in different combinations. The use of soil was also eliminated as this research focuses more towards economic approach in managing organic waste. However, more extensive research should be conducted to investigate the commercial viability of this approach since this is only done in laboratory scale. Keywords Vermicomposting, Eudrilluseugeniae (African Nightcrawlers), Microbial consortium, Combined organic waste, Enhanced, Degradation, Carbon to nitrogen ratio 1. Introduction Malaysia faced serious problems due to the ever increasing amount of MSW (Agamuthu et al., 2004; Fauziah and Agamuthu, 2003) that solid waste is considered as one of the three major environmental problems faced by most municipalities besides water and air pollutions (World Bank, 1999). The waste generation rate in Malaysia is continuously rising every year. This is due to the increasing population, the attitude towards shopping and the high living standard, which resulted with impacts from the uncontrollable consumption. Major part of the solid waste generated in Malaysia is from the agricultural and industrial sector. In the past, the high volume of agro-waste generated were dumped into the landfill or buried in the ground. Accumulation of * Corresponding author: shamsugeshsaan@yahoo.co.uk (Shamini K.) Published online at http://journal.sapub.org/microbiology Copyright © 2014 Scientific & Academic Publishing. All Rights Reserved organic wastes has a negative impact on the environment, as transformation of these refuses through composting alleviates their potential toxicity in the environment and recycles organic fractions for agricultural purposes (Garcia et al.,1991). Wastes from agricultural industries contain very high concentrations of organic material, suspended solids, nitrogen and phosphorus. On the other hand, rejected agricultural materials such as straw, leaves and other by-products, which are burned, dumped and disposed of, account for nearly half of all agricultural production. In Peninsular Malaysia, a total of 4.2 million tons of crop residue and 2.3 million tons of livestock waste were produced. Excluding sewage, agricultural waste from livestock farms, pesticides, and fertilizers constitute highest source of organic pollutants to rivers and coastal waters (Agamuthu et al., 2007). The major aim of agricultural waste conversions is to minimise the waste production. Recycling of the spent agricultural substrates into commercially value added product can minimise waste dumping into the landfill (Agamuthu et al., 2007). The ever alarming issues of the