Reinforcing the message of "reduce, reuse, recycle," students at Franklin Elementary School in Kent took part in grade level assemblies as part of the Earth Day program.

The local nonprofit "Sustainability for Educators and the Environment" looks to a "zero waste" facet of sustainability by maximizing recycling, minimizing waste and reducing consumption while ensuring products are made to be reused, repaired or recycled back into nature or the marketplace.

SEE interns lead students at two separate stations during the assemblies -- composting and recycling. At the composting station, students heard about the vermiculture bins and related facts about worm biology.

Vermiculture uses worms to compost food scraps as well as dry leaves and shredded paper, called bedding.

The worms eat and digest the food and their castings, or excrement, becomes a rich soil additive for use in gardens and potted plants.

At the recycling station, students learned how to separate and categorize some traditional wastes such as paper, plastics, metal and organics.

Students also were encouraged to develop their own ideas about how to create less trash and to reuse or recycle.

Five Franklin Elementary teachers received vermiculture bins, one for each grade level and an intern from SEE will visit classrooms and lead them into vermiculture recycling, or other zero-waste activities.

Franklin hopes to implement the program at the beginning of the fall school year.

Following the program, a sustainability theme club, "Worm Wranglers" was launched to draw additional attention to a hopeful "zero waste" policy one day.

Marking the celebration, all of the students wore green to school.

"Zero-waste is a long road, but with the enthusiasm shown by the Franklin students, we're positive real and practical changes will be made both in the school and in the community," said Brian Grimm, one of the founders of SEE.

For more information about SEE, its programs, or how SEE can work with teachers and their students at local schools, visit the Web site at http://www.talklessd...oog.

(photos)
During the Worm Assembly at Franklin Elementary School in Kent, interns Sarah Goldstein, left, and Britni Neiling explain to the fifth-graders of Barb Kunkler and Kim Mizelle's classes how those food scraps not consumed in the cafeteria can be recycled into a non-waste function.

Sifting through paper shreds and dried leaves, kindergartener Jacob Orms of Barb Wagner's all-day kindergarten program digs for a worm.