Local landscape architecture and civil engineering firm CARMAN has set its sights on composting a half-ton of coffee grounds by Earth Day, which will be held this year on April 22.
Recycling used coffee is not a new concept for CARMAN. The company had already been collecting its own inter-office coffee grounds and filters, and the compost has been put to work in the personal tomato garden of the firm’s senior principal, John L. Carman, for years. But the company’s four pots of coffee per day only generates 20 to 30 pounds of used grounds per month. To show its support for community composting, the company decided to aim higher this year and give back roughly 1,000 pounds of soil-enriching love.
CARMAN employee Beth Workman has been reaching out to local businesses, churches, coffee shops and friends to help in the effort to fill roughly 50 five-gallon buckets in time for Earth Day. So far, Workman said, the company has ten full buckets in its office basement, ready and waiting to be recycled.
CARMAN is partnering with the community garden non-profit group Seedleaf, which has an established community composting program that picks up kitchen scraps from local restaurants and other partners regularly to be transformed into compost for local gardens. The finished coffee-fueled compost will be used by GreenHouse17, an area advocacy agency that works to end intimate partner abuse in central Kentucky. GreenHouse17 manages roughly 40 acres of farmland in support of its recovery services.
Those interested in donating used coffee grounds or looking for additional information can contact Beth Workman by e-mail at bworkman@carmansite.com or by phone at (859)254-9803.