Composting

The local coffee chain in Louisville is Heine Bros. It's owner is a community minded guy that's also interested in the environment. He's starting a pilot program to compost all the coffee grounds that's generated in his stores each day. In addition they are adding the vegetable waste from the local health food market. Yesterday Sarah and I volunteered to help with the effort. We added about 1,700 lbs of organics to the bins. It had accumulated over a period of weeks. The composting process begins with bacteria breaking down the food in large bins. After a few weeks it is moved into different bins and worms are added to speed up the works. Heine hopes that this becomes a pilot program to prove to other companies that it can be done easily. The resulting dirt is sold off I believe.

It is amazing to see the sheer volume of food and coffee waste that would normally go right into a landfill. It's nice to see it get recycled into something usable.