Trillium Woods Gets Green
Photos and Article by Nicole Beauvais-Holt
Cathy loves her worms! In fact she thinks
everyone should love worms as they are the
angels of the earth.
"It's your future and it is great that you are
taking on this responsibility," she told the
full house of eager young students from
Trillium Woods. Cathy Nesbitt of Cathy's
Crawly Composters was at the school to
help set up Bronwen Lash's Grades 4-
7 Gifted classroom with their very own
vermicomposter. This is the process of
using worms to help compost organic
materials to generate rich-in-nutrients
worm waste for gardens.
The children will be caring for their
composter and feeding it with organic
food waste, some generated from their
own school lunches which. just adds to the
benefits of composting.
"Kids may actually start bringing some
healthier choices so that they can help feed
the worms," said Lash. "You can't put just
anything in there."
Cathy's presentation to the children was
full of information and there was no end
to the questions her rapt audience had. "If
a worm eats too much will it throw up?" "Do
worms have feet?" "Why can't we put meat
in our composter?"- Students learned about
anaerobic digestion and how Toronto's
green box program is generating green fuel
and all about the decomposition process.
"I'm not sure when I became obsessed with
garbage, but I am!" Cathy told the class
with a laugh. Worms love coffee grounds
and Cathy once did an experiment with a
local coffee shop. "It wasn't even one of the
busier ones and I collected 1,000 pounds
of coffee grounds and filters in 30 days!"
The week before students were shown An
Inconvenient Truth, former Vice President
AI Gore's enlightening and downright
frightening movie on the state of our
environment.
"The kids were just shocked and wanted to
know What can we do to stop this," recalled
Lash.
Bryton, a student in Mrs. Lash's class
told me; "People don't understand about
-global warming because they don't want
to understand. They feel scared by it. They
think if I don't think about it; it will go
away."
Trillium Woods is doing their part though.
It has a Green Team; an environmental task
force of students. This group is composed
of all age groups and they are helping
with the school's recycling program and
learning more about the environment by
participating in meetings and providing
their input.
When I asked them what they would
be doing with their worm castings (the
compost) I was told they are going to try
to participate in the Space Seeds program
where they will grow tomato plants from
seeds that have spent time at zero-gravity
and regular seeds.
Back to Articles
