From Food Waste to Golden Fertilizer
Vision
Within our grade 4 classroom we had only a Rubbermaid bin with red wiggler worms. We were unable to use the castings and soil for our plants throughout the school. There were too many worms and worm babies to sift through properly. Our school had no food waste management, reduction practices, or composting. Our main goal was to decrease food waste within our classroom while helping our red wiggler worms make fertilizer for our school plants.
Action
Our class wanted to make better choices when it came to waste management. With the proper 4-Tray Worm Composters bins we were able to house over a thousand red wiggler worms properly and effectively. The compost bin allowed for food waste to go into the layers for the worms to crawl through. Within one week, we would have 15 cups of coffee ground from the staff room and about 5-10 cups of food waste in our classroom. We have been able to use the “liquid gold” from the worms in the bottom to help our indoor plants. At the end of each week we would feed our worms the food waste and bar graph the amount of food that was wasted that week. The students learned how to separate the worms from the castings by baiting them for two weeks and putting them back into our main worm bins.
Reflection & Celebration
Our worm castings benefit plants within our school and soon we will be selling the worm castings to in-cooperate more food waste bins for our school. The students also felt a lot of pride knowing that they are lowering food waste, helping our decomposers, and recycling egg cartons and paper.