The Brooklyn Botanical Garden is probably one of the most popular tourist attractions in New York City. Sadly for tourists, they don’t know the many opportunities that the garden offers. For the environmentally conscious citizens, science junkies, or the average New Yorker, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden is a never-ending resource to further their thirst for knowledge in the natural sciences. In particular, for those who are concerned with the amount of waste in New York City, they gather for an evening Wednesday composting class.

Instead of heading home after a long day at work, participants come to 1000 Washington Ave. to further educate themselves on indoor composting. Most of the participants are teachers who expressed interest in having a compost bin in their classrooms. They want to teach their students the importance of using their food leftovers in a useful way, but also creating fun by having a strange class pet.

Though most of the class are teachers, there are some who aren’t. Melissa Brzuszek is a gardener who wants to put a compost bin in her home.

“We love to cook a lot, but we started to notice the amount of food scraps we were creating,” said Melissa. She and her wife wanted to change the way they used their leftovers by utilizing their garden in their backyard. By using a compost bin, they can throw out their food scraps in their garden that can be used to grow their greenery.  Though this is the main reason, this isn’t the only reason for Melissa as she also wants to educate her customers on the importance of composting.

Throughout the class, the instructor and project coordinator of the NYC Compost Project, Claudia Neves educates the participants on how to use Eisenia fetida or Red Wiggler worm as their decomposer for their compost bins.

“Redwood worms are the most common and easiest to buy on the internet,” Claudia teaches the class. Letting participants touch the worms, they are easy to find on the internet, but not easy to find with the human eye.

Claudia leads the class to the greenhouse to show them how to set up their compost bins. Shredding newspapers, spritzing liquid, cutting food scraps, then finally putting the worms into the bin, people are amazed that no soil, not even a little bit, needs to be added to get the compost going. The worms take all the credit to create the soil-like material.

“Don’t use meat or bread as your food scraps. You don’t want to attract pests,” instructs Claudia. Pizza rat might look cute in the subway, but he doesn’t look cute in the home or classroom. Vegetables, fruits, and surprisingly coffee grinds can be used as food scraps for the worms to eat.

Claudia knows what she is talking about since she has been composting since 2008. “I used to live in Seattle, so the city collects food scraps from the curbs,” she states. Over there, composting is the norm, so the switch for her was easy.  “Composting is useful, so I feel motivated. There is just so much waste sitting in landfills when they can be used for something useful.”

The class adjourns at 8 PM, but participants linger around anyway. They ask questions, read more material, and talk to other participants. It can be said for sure that these participants will be buying a bag of worms to bring home.