You’ve probably heard of “bring your kid to work” day. This is where parents bring their child to work so they can see what they do every day to bring home the bacon. But have you ever heard of “bring a worm to work” day? Californians have. But in their case, it’s more like “bring lots of worms to work” day! But unlike kids, who just get to scope out the surroundings and maybe mix up a few papers, these worms are put to work! Not paper shuffling mind you, but real get-down dirty work. They’re getting rid of after lunch garbage!

It turns out that the state of California encourages workers to bring worms to work in order to reduce the amount of garbage that comes out of offices each day. A lot of this waste is food waste, leftover sandwich crusts, apple cores, and what have you. The worms are placed in their own special dirt and newspaper filled composting bins. They get to work as soon as the first limp lettuce leaf falls.

Of course, you can’t just keep any old worms in a bin for ages and expect them to be happy. Usually a special type of worm, known as a red wriggler, is used for office and home compost bins. Of course, not all offices are keen on having wrigglers wriggling around their office, but many are. At the Environmental Protection Agency office in Sacramento, California, hundreds of thousands of worms happily munch up 5 tons of leftovers each and every year. Go worms!