24,000 Worms to Dig Into School Leftovers

In the first program of its kind in the Los Angeles Unified School District, 24,000 worms will join ecologically minded students at Nobel Middle School in a composting project that will transform cafeteria garbage into fertilizer.

“We’re taking the food waste from the cafeteria, and instead of that going into a landfill, we’re feeding it to the worms and using the castings [worm feces] in our flower beds,” said Kelly Rogers, the plant manager at Nobel. “It makes excellent fertilizer.”

Rogers suggested the school try “vermicomposting” after he attended a seminar on waste management.

On Saturday afternoon, members of the Nobel Recycling Club, Science Department and PTSA will gather at the school to build six composting bins for the worms, which were delivered earlier in the week from the Happy “D” Ranch in Visalia.

Nobel administrators said the cafeteria serves 1,200 meals daily and discards approximately 18 pounds of food waste per day.

Multiply those 18 pounds by the number of days in the school year and it equals approximately 4,000 pounds of waste dumped into landfills each year.

The composting bins will be lined with newspapers, which themselves become part of the compost. Each bin of worms will be “fed” one day a week, Rogers said.

“It gives the worms about seven days to eat the food,” he said. “If you put in too much food it begins to rot and smell.”

In addition to the ecological value of the project, students who participate will receive an ongoing science lesson.

Students must determine the total space of the bins, the number of worms to add, and the amount of waste to feed the worms, Rogers said.