Te late Ms Mary Arlene Appelhof ( 1936 --2005 ) - widely known as the "Worm Woman" advocated using earthworms to recycle food waste into usable fertilizer. For more than two decades, she researched, developed, and marketed products related to the earthworm and in 1982 self-published Worms Eat My Garbage. By the time she wrote the second edition in 1997 - after her NSF SBIR award - she had sold over 250,000 copies. As âWorm Woman of Kalamazoo,â she introduced thousands of schoolchildren and home gardeners to the fascinating, environmentally-significant activity of vermicomposting. Bent on wanting to change the way the world thought about garbage, Ms Applehof traveled around the world: Russia, Ireland, England and Australia to share her ideas about vermicomposting. In 2000, she organized a vermicomposting seminar in Michigan, called it the "Vermillenieum" and drew people from around the world. She was an international authority and lecturer on small-scale vermicomposting whose honors included this NSF SBIR Award and the National Recycling Coalitionâs Recycler of the Y
