Recycling worms its way into local school
Students learn about vermicomposting
BY JENNIFER AMATO Staff Writer
Normally, if a worm is found in the lunchroom, all hysteria breaks loose and the Department of Health is called in for an inspection.

ERIC SUCAR staff A group of students combs through a barrel of red worm castings during a vermicomposting project at Parsons Elementary School in North Brunswick on Feb. 19.

Parsons Elementary School in North Brunswick is getting a pass on this health violation.

On Feb. 19, the third-grade students of Project Wise, the Gifted & Talented after-school program, were introduced to vermicomposting, which uses worms to create compost from cafeteria scraps.

"When they start with the worms, they just freak out. They love it," said Richard Hills.

Hills is the division head of the Middlesex County Division of Solid Waste Management and is certified as a master composter. He holds workshops in county schools about twice a week, hoping children will tell their parents about the environmentally friendly way of disposing of edible garbage.

Hills developed the vermicomposting method years ago. He buys the worms from a worm farmer in Bordentown, about 1,000 red 3-inch worms per pound. Each school gets an initial thousand creatures, donated by the county, although he said they "propagate like crazy," while living to be 7 years old.

ERIC SUCAR staff Richard Hills, of the Middlesex County Division of Solid Waste Management, points to a worm during a program about composting at Parsons Elementary School in North Brunswick on Feb. 19.

"You can get an awful lot of worms," he said of each hermaphrodite that lays one to three babies per egg.

The worms are kept in a plastic bin 3 feet long and 8 inches high, with paper bedding in it, and they will eat the contents of the bins. After consuming kitchen scraps, they "poop it out," making castings, which are used as organic fertilizer.

Hills said the process takes about four to six months.

"I let the kids dig through the bins, look for worms and cocoons, and add them to their bins," he said.

During the "recycling cycle," Hills said, the worms will devour the food in one bin and then migrate to a fresh bin, where more food is stored. The bedding is kept moist with holes to catch the liquid, which is called vermicomposting tea.

The finished product will look like topsoil but will not smell. At the end of the school year, the students will plant hundreds of flowers from the compost they used to grow seeds in recycled water bottles collected from lunch.

"You just cannot appreciate how vibrant growing something in vermicomposting is," he said.

The students of Project Wise decided on the "WormsMunch Lunch" project because their theme this year is the environment. After researching different methods of recycling, they chose worm composting as their method of choice.

"We had been noticing that when children eat, sometimes there are leftovers of some of the food and they throw it in the garbage. We don't want that. … Certain types of worms eat it so we don't waste it," third-grade student Anabia Kamran said.

Fellow third-grader Kopal Jha said the students were not grossed out by the idea of using worms.

"It was really cool because the way [Mr. Hills] showed us, we found out about their body parts and how worms eat and that was really cool to us," she said.

"They were slithering. There were baby worms and that was very interesting," Anabia added.

They said they were taught by Hills to take special care of the worms, such as feeding them only organic materials, keeping them moist and hiding them from the light so they don't become paralyzed.

Because of the fun they are having, while learning, the 11 students of Project Wise also decided to make more bins and help get other bins donated so that each grade level can have a few.

"There's a lot of things happening to the environment and there is a lot of pollution and a lot of things really get wasted, and if you don't stop it, people will get sick because of the environment going bad," Kopal said.

The students also have access to guest speakers about the environment. Besides Hills, MC Blue, the county's recycling robot, spoke to the class, and scheduled to visit is Councilman Ralph Andrews, who is on the North Brunswick 2030 Committee and an advocate of protecting the environment.

The class is also extending their recycling program to include collections of recycled cell phones and ink cartridges.

In addition to the worms, Hills told the students about backyard composting, which usually begins in the spring. He explained the process but will come back to set up a bin outside toward the end of March. Then, the school will be responsible for adding vegetative material the kids collect along with lunch scraps such as lettuce, apple cores, egg shells, orange skins and banana peels.

He also teaches the students about recycling and cutting down on solid waste to provide for more landfill space.

On a broader application, Hills said there is a regional composting site for leaves on brush on Route 130, which mulches and redistributes the environmental materials. Homeowners can purchase bins and participate in the backyard-recycling program. Vermicomposting would be done individually be each resident.

Middlesex County already has achieved the 60 percent required rate for recycling for nine out of 11 years, and has been No. 1 in the state for three years, Hills said. He said of the 2 million tons of waste generated by the county each year, 1.2 million tons are being recycled.

"The amount of solid waste we're producing can be reused as food or ingredients used in composting and can be returned to the soil as organic nutrients," he said. "We can turn into it valuable plant material that is not tainted with chemicals. The longer we can reduce the amount of our solid waste flow, the longer our landfills are going to stay open."

Hills holds composting workshops in conjunction with the Rutgers Cooperative Extension at Davidson Mill Pond Park in South Brunswick. A backyardcomposting lecture is scheduled for Saturday, March 29 from 10 a.m. to noon, and a vermicomposting seminar will be held Thursday, April 10 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Fall lectures will take place toward the end of September.

Hills also lectures during the Master Gardeners program at the Cooperative Extension.

For more information, call (732) 745 - 4170 or visit www.co.Middlesex.NJ.US/ PlanningBoard/SolidWaste.asp.