Coffee 2 Compost

Vital Stats

Maximilian S

Bozeman, MT

  • people helped 9
  • People Doing It14

The Problem

The unquestioned social addiction of having a cup of steaming coffee to start the day channels a stupendous amount of biomass from productive tropical regions of the world to nearly every city, town, village, hamlet and hovel in the United States and other countries that are far from such tropical areas. After the caffeine is leached out with a few solids into that coveted acidic solution, the prized beans still contain most of their organic resources. And yet, we believe the global system that organizes everything from planting, cultivating, harvesting, distributing and consuming these beans is surely missing a step. The remnants are usually piled up and thrown to the landfill, that pay-it-no-mind receptacle for the things society decides are completely useless. But coffee grounds are far from useless. Believe it or not, coffee grounds and their accompanying filters make a fantastic addition to a compost pile.

Plan of Action

-Start a pilot project in the fall of 2010 with two coffee shops to test our skills in coordinating with these shops and volunteers (done). -Carry out the project through the winter and grow the size and temperature of our compost piles (done). -Grow our volunteer base to 15 students and community members (nearly done). -Extend the number of composting systems at new community garden sites across Bozeman. Build Bokashi systems that anaerobically digest organic matter in 90 days! -Grow the project in the fall of 2011 by attracting 10 coffee shops. -Use the funds collected from coffee shops each month to spur other youth-driven projects and lend a portion of the funds as micro-loans to several cooperatives producing the coffee beans. -Create a handbook that students in other neighborhoods can use to recreate and improve upon our model of urban composting (done).

Project Updates

Spinning wheels and feeding microorganisms is kind of what we're all about.

But we're not use to having a surge of interest from new volunteers! So when Cheyenne brought her younger cousin Issac out for a composting shift, and the next week she brought her friend Maggie, and the next week Elsie joined the project and went out on her first solo shift, things began taking off.

In other news, DoSomething recently awarded us with a $500 grant, which we'll put to use buying a safer bicycle trailer and 5 gallon buckets we'll need to expand the project to more shops.

Imagine . . . all of this in a month's time!

So we did the only logical thing a bunch of compost freaks could do . . . we started picking up from shops 2x per week. And we're actively recruiting new volunteers (because it's easy to do so for a fun project like this) and coffee shops through posters, newsletters, table tents and more!

Shux. We're just getting started! Thanks for the support, DoSomething!

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Environment
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