Earthworms Help Beijingers Dispose of Trash
7/23/2001
Xinhua News Agency
BEIJING --
Feeding earthworms at home may become a new trend among residents in the
Chinese capital.
As Monday's Beijing Daily reports, 30 children in the city recently took home
over 30,000 earthworms from China Childrens' Center as pets, hoping that the
environment-friendly worms will help dispose of domestic waste.
The paper says that the worms are being used as part of a Volunteer Program
aiming to improve the environment in the national capital, which will host the
2008 Olympic Games.
Under the plan of the program, 10,000 families will use the family-raised
earthworms to dispose of domestic garbage and 100, 000 volunteers will be
recruited from across the country to help protect Beijing's environment.
It was reported that during the Sydney Olympic Games, about 400 million
earthworms were used to dispose of urban waste.
Experts said raising earthworms as family pets would make children become
more environmentally-aware and ease the city's waste disposal burden.
The experts said that the soil-like dung of these red worms is a good
fertilizer for plants. Leftovers and other organic rubbish such as rotten
peaches and the useless rind of watermelons are their favorite foodstuffs.
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