Feeding worms is serious business for third-grader Aya Miyahara.
She has only 40 minutes for lunch, so she and her composting pals have to work quickly. They scarf down their lunches, sort their leftovers into “compost’ and “garbage,’ and spend the rest of their time table-hopping around the cafeteria.
Their mission: rally fellow students to surrender orange peels and other organic waste so they can mash it into worm food. Red wiggler worm food, to be exact.
Aya and her compost army have teamed up with faculty and parents at Carson Elementary School in Denver to spearhead a project that teaches students how lunch waste becomes plant food through composting.
For their earth-minded efforts, the students today are scheduled to accept the Denver Public Schools’ 2005 Earth Day School of the Year award from Gov. Bill Owens.
After feeding worms to create compost, the students plan to use the recycled garbage to fertilize their new school garden, composed entirely of native Colorado plants.
“I liked helping gather food because you get to mash it up and cut things,’ Aya said. “It kind of feels like you’re taking responsibility.’
The cafeteria at Carson is decorated with signs made and researched by students, instructing kids what can be used for compost (grapes) and what can’t (Fruit Roll-Ups).
Parent coordinator Theresa Becker said the composting project has encouraged kids to work together for a common goal: feeding the worms.
“Aside from the whole recycling and science part of it, it’s been really neat to see how the relationships are developing,’ she said.
The students have collected more than 7 gallons of lunch waste, Becker said.
“I imagine when we really start a full year of it, we’ll show the kids what we’re doing as far as preventing what’s going into a landfill,’ she said.
Until it is used in the planting process in mid-May, the compost is being kept in teacher Kerry Santambrogio’s first grade classroom. Though the biggest appeal for students has been the worms (which they admit they haven’t actually seen since they burrowed into the compost), Santambrogio is impressed at how much the kids have learned about the environment.
“What I really think that we’ve accomplished is having the Earth safer,’ fifth- grader Nyssa Lowenstein said.
Staff writer Melissa Cassutt can be reached at 303-820-1475 or mcassutt@denverpost.com.
