Governo and Thompson are testing the worms' ability to eliminate sludge from a town's waste disposal plant.
Most people associate the lowly earthworm with fish bait.
But thanks to its voracious appetite for garbage, a growing number of people see it as a practical way to dispose of society's waste. They're very small and they are very aggressive eaters. They reproduce very quickly. They are working with the city of Trion, in northwest Georgia, to see if the worms can be used effectively to eliminate sludge from municipal waste. And they're trying to see if earthworms can be used to compost manure from hen houses, which would be a boon for Georgia's poultry industry.