Our undervalued little friends should be the recipients of much gratitude. They care for one of the most important natural processes… decomposition. Tirelessly they breakdown organic matter and turn it into rich nutrients for plants.
This week in sustainability, primary and lower elementary focused on the process of decomposition and investigated who is doing the work in our compost pile. They discovered all kinds of busy decomposers at work, turning our food waste into compost. Lower elementary also did a population count of the various decomposers and made a graph of their data.
Understanding what is happening at a small scale, such as focusing on our compost pile, helps to understand bigger systems, such as nutrient cycling in the forest. This is how we become systems thinkers, which is the only way we can solve complex problems.