 | ||||
So, if someone offered to make your garden as fertile as the rainforest for free would you take them up on it? I just couldn’t keep myself from asking the good folks at Caffetto coffee shop if they wouldn’t mind setting aside the coffee bean waste they produce for use in my home compost system instead of tossing it in the landfill bound dumpster. Just my luck, the crew at Caffetto agreed that it was a bad idea to throw out rainforest fertility that could instead be diverted to our gardens. There are plenty of good folks working in the coffee trade here in Minneapolis. The eco-heroes at Peace Coffee are equally as happy to divert their coffee waste as well. As a coffee roaster they can divert not only the spent coffee grounds, but they also produce large bags of fluffy chaff that flakes off the beans during the coffee roast. Coffee grounds have plenty of nitrogen to help balance out the carbon elements available in the bean chaff. Since I started adding large amounts of coffee waste products to my compost pile, it now steams like a boiling pot with just the slightest turn of the shovel!
All Photos and Text By Russ Henry
©2010 by Giving Tree Gardens, all rights reserved.
Coffee Compost
Coffee compost is an all around winner and an easy concept to sell to coffee shop proprietors. At Caffetto, the staff has switched from changing out the garbage three times a day to once a day, and the garbage bags don’t split and break open under the weight of the coffee grounds anymore. After a little figuring at the coffee counter, we determined that we’re diverting 12 cubic yards of waste out of the landfill and into my compost bin each year. In order to start collecting this “free money”, I simply supplied the coffee shop with a few 5 gallon buckets that they can set out by the dumpster for me as they are filled. If you live anywhere near Caffetto or Peace Coffee and would like to start composting some joyous java at home, click here and spill your beans. Otherwise get your bucket brigade ready and head for the nearest coffee shop or roaster to bring a little tropical fertility to your own back yard!
In The Garden:
