This week, hundreds of new residents arrived in Zeballos after making the long trip from Vancouver.
The students in the Grades 3 to 6 class at Zeballos Elementary Secondary School knew that these fresh arrivals to Zeballos would be exhausted and hungry from their journey, so they introduced them to their new homes at the school and made sure to give them a good hearty meal of…compost.
Yes, these are residents of the wormy kind. They have come to Zeballos to help the students to prevent the organic waste created at the school from ending up at the Zeballos landfill.
The worms are Red Wigglers, which can devour an amazing quantity of food waste; half of their own weight each day.
The students are familiar with working with these worms as they have been composting classroom food waste in vermi (worm) compost bins since last year.
This year, the Strathcona Regional District, Greentools Canada, Wormworx and Juniper Environmental Services have supported the class to upgrade from smaller homemade bins to larger, more sophisticated worm bins (called ‘Hungry Bins’) and to purchase extra Red Wigglers to boost the current population. The Zeballos Initiative for Produce Society (ZIPS) and the Ehattesaht Nation have also expressed their support and interest.
The students will tend these worms and when the population is at its peak in a few months, the worms will be able to process all of the school’s food waste, converting it into a rich organic fertilizer for gardens in the community.
