In the corner of John Winters’ seventh-grade technology room at Draper Middle School in Rotterdam stands a large, green cylindrical device on a pedestal. It is about the size of a home furnace. It smells slightly like soil and is filled with what looks like wet newspaper. If you look closely inside, you might see a worm or two crawling around.
The device is called a vermicomposter and it was donated to the school this past September by a group of students at the middle school called Peers for Peace. The vermicomposter is part of the seventh-grade technology curriculum and is also used by Peers for Peace.
Vermicomposting is a form of composting that involves worms. They eat raw, organic waste and then convert it into a material that is humus-like in substance. This substance is called castings. The worms then stir and aerate their castings to create vermicompost.
Such a process offers an alternative to simply throwing away food scraps or putting them down a garbage disposal. Instead of ending up in landfills and the sewage system, those scraps are turned into a material that can be added to gardens and potted plants.
Most people think that if you [throw away] garbage and food scraps, that it’ll disappear first in a landfill, but when you put that garbage in a landfill and you put other waste in, the garbage doesn’t decompose, said Winters.
In his classroom, Winters teaches his students how the process works and also how they can make their own home vermicomposter.
`If you were going to make [a vermicomposter] out of a coffee can, you would put bedding, like newspaper, on the bottom, and then your composting — vegetables and food scraps — in the middle, and then water,` said seventh-grader Kala Aubery.
After the vermicompost lesson for Winters’ class is over, activities in the vermicomposter (also known as a `worm wigwam`) will continue. Peers for Peace, an extracurricular school group that consists of 46 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders, will take over the project. Since the worm wigwam is relatively new, they’re still working out the logistics of where the food will come from and exactly what they’re going to do with the compost once it’s created.
`The students are going to be in charge of taking the project on. They’re the ones who are going to make the bedding and collect the food waste with Mr. Winters’ guidance,` said Maria Pacheco, a foreign language teacher at Draper Middle School and the faculty advisor of Peers for Peace. `Right now what we’re working on is how to get the food supply — the food waste.`
Pacheco and her students are in discussion with the cafeterias on the school’s campus, and they are also considering contacting the local Price Chopper to see if they can collect food waste left over from the salad bar.
Winters has been feeding the worms with food scraps from his home.
`We want to have a steady source of food waste so the project can take off,` said Pacheco.
The compost can be harvested every three months. The more food you have, the more worms you have, and with more worms, comes more compost.
Pacheco said the students are going to try to sell the compost to fund new projects.
Peers for Peace is a diversity tolerance program where students are encouraged through different activities to create a harmonious environment throughout the school.
Participating students are divided into various committees to undertake special projects, such as arranging programs for the entire school to encourage diversity and learning how to create a greener environment.
For more information on the composting program or about Peers for Peace, visit the school’s Web site at www.mohonasen.org.
“