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The concept is this:
Waste from coffee houses is filled with water. Starbucks dumps it in hefty bags. Sure, they offer compost to whoever will take it, but I suspect the diversion is far outweighed by the amount people won't take. In the back of the original Groundwork Coffee (formerly Gourmet Coffee Warehouse), the owner graciously stockpiles used coffee in an open bin. He has thanked me for taking 100 lbs at a time from there.
It is like sending an aquarium to the dump with the water still in it. This water weight on the dump trucks means a lot more gas is consumed, more carbon in the air, and more tax dollars spent as compared with other forms of waste that cannot be composted.
My idea is to take an area, like Montana/Wilshire from 5th to 26th street, and see what we end up with by creating a compost zone. Take all of the markets green waste, all of the breakfast restaurant eggshells, all of the juice bar waste, maybe all of the grass clippings and yard trimmings, and yes the fish waste, and bake it with this coffee compost... see how much waste is diverted to a local compost pile, and what kind of soil you end up with.
We don't have cows or horses in Santa Monica, but coffee serves much the same function in compost as animal manure: it provides nitrogen, moisture, sustained heat, and significantly increases worm counts.
There ought to be a branch of science devoted to coffee compost.
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