Some students of worm history suspect that worms have digested most of the earth's soil at least once and probably many more times over the past millenniums. Worms don't get a lot of credit for their efforts, even if they do get invited to go fishing once in awhile. Worms don't speak up or give directions, but there are a few people who have asked them to show us how to better handle our food wastes and rebuild our vanishing soil cover. Some of these people are teachers and students in Missouri schools. Small worm bins in hundreds of classrooms have become popular as a means of showing how even the smallest creatures can help us handle a very large problem.
Worms are friendly to all living things, and help all dead things find a useful afterlife.
Most of what we eat was once living and once we throw out our leftovers, there is still a lot of material there that can be useful. The amount of food scraps thrown away by Missouri citizens is now nearly 20 percent of all wastes discarded from our homes, businesses and industries. Worms have a role in future Missouri waste reduction. The less food we bury, the less leachate and methane we will have sneaking around underground. Over the past several years, the DNR has been studying ways to make it easier for worms to get to the food wastes discarded by restaurants, food markets, hospitals, nursing homes, schools, and prisons.