Standing guard at the back part of Hokulani Elementary's lunchroom are four pint-sized sentries blocking the path to the trash.

Armed with bins and badges, they aren't going to let you past if you have potential worm food.

Fourth-grader Tehani Hamano digs leftover salad from the lunch tray from a fifth-grader nearly twice her size. Classmate Katie Woo grabs peaches with her bare hands. During a lull, Ken Tung and Charity Lopes absently crumble up soggy bread into worm-digestible pieces and swirl the contents of their bins with their naked fingers.

This is one eco-friendly school, all right. And they're not afraid to get down and dirty with it.

The fourth-graders' vermicomposting system is serving as a model of what one public elementary can do to not only keep lunchroom waste to a minimum, but also instill environmental values at a young age.

After the lunchroom clears, twice a week, Kacie Sakamaki and other fourth-graders feed the remnants of second-period lunch to worms inhabiting a new pipeline system, donated by the city and Waikiki Worms.

And yes, they do touch the creatures.

"They feel like live noodles," said Kacie, drawing laughs.

As she talked, Kacie fluffed the soil to make the slithering critters visible — not an easy endeavor, given that worms like to take cover from the sun. Eventually, however, the two kinds of worms could be spotted.

What kinds are they, class?

"Indian blue and red wigglers," they said in just the kind of sing-song unison that's music to the ears of teachers everywhere.

Fourth-graders crowd around the half-barrel-sized vermicompost, spreading the leftover food gathered by the sentries and topping it with wet, shredded paper.

"It's mushy and gross," said Amanda Kimball, up to her wrists in worm food and not looking at all grossed out.

"They tickle when they walk on you," added Raellis Young.

Leading the way to greener pastures are fourth-grade teachers Laurie Yoshinaga and Naomi Oshiro, who not only oversee the feeding of the worms by students during the school year, but also take on the job themselves during school breaks.

Hokulani's vermicomposting project is a multipronged recycling project, explained the school's principal, Al Carganilla.

The worms handle about half the waste generated from the lunchtime for the 370-child student body, while also providing a use for shredded school records. Paper is organic material.

Eventually, the school hopes to expand the worm project to take care of all lunchtime waste, and then to sell the compost and "compost tea" from their worm project as fundraisers.

Educationally, Hokulani's worms provide more than just a science lesson: The kids weigh their bins and add in their head the combined weight of this week's haul (math), and talk about all the things that can be recycled (social science).

The hope is, the recycling lessons spreads.

"We hope it extends to home," said Carganilla. "If we're only doing it at school, it's not going to help."