They're lazy, greedy and sloppy—and they don't mind carrying extra pounds. In fact, they're pigs. But at the Webb School, a Claremont, Calif., prep school, Larry, Curly and Moe are hog-wild for the environment. Every day, the year-old sows eat 12 lbs. of leftovers from the cafeteria—food that used to end up in landfill. Albert Walsh, the senior who came up with the idea, is happy as a pig in, er, well, whatever. "It just makes sense," says student-body president Walsh, 17. "I'd hate to see the environment ruined because of our negligence."
Actually, Walsh has long looked to animal cleanup crews. Growing up in Hillsborough, Calif. (his father, Robert, now deceased, and his mother, Beth, 48, owned a publishing business), he suggested goats to keep backyard weeds under control, "but my mom didn't think I was responsible enough to care for anything bigger than a rabbit," he recalls. When Walsh proposed the pigs last May, Webb's dean, Patrick Collins, was an easier sell. "Albert can be pretty persuasive," he says. Walsh got the town to waive a city regulation barring swine and, after installing the Three Stooges' namesakes in a new chain-link pigpen near the baseball field, began schlepping leftovers by golf cart. "They get so much," says Walsh, "they're getting really picky." What the pigs don't eat goes into a compost bin, where, mixed with pig waste, it becomes fertilizer for campus gardens. Despite his success, Walsh isn't completely satisfied. "When I told my mother," he notes, "she said, 'You still can't have a pig.' "
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