Mary Isakson
Kitchen worms may sound like the latest urban plague; perhaps even the basis for a horror movie. Actually, it's just that the composting movement has come indoors.

These days it's easy to find inexpensive home composting kits with a plastic bin, a supply of worms, and simple instructions for providing a friendly home for those worms. In exchange for your effort, you are rewarded with composting service, provided by reliable workers (the worms!). The process is exciting for young children to participate in; it provides a tangible education in the natural world and a practical benefit in the form of compost for your houseplants, window boxes, or garden. (In New York City, the Lower East Side Ecology center offers workshops to get you started.)

Perhaps you are not quite open (yet?) to welcoming a pound of red wigglers into your home. There are other ways to benefit from composting:

Some community gardens and recycling centers accept contributions of household scraps; some organizations sell local compost -- find out if such organizations exist in your area. In New York City where I live, for example, there's a map of local composting services, available at GreenApplemap.org. To see if similar resources exist in your area, check out GreenMap.org, the website of Green Map System. Green Map is an international organization promoting development of local maps illustrating environmentally sustainable services; they provide an exciting opportunity for individuals or groups (families or schools included!) to promote a green theme of their choice in their local community.