PinoyEcoFarmer

“Worm composting is a process for recycling food waste into a rich, dark, earth-smelling soil conditioner. One of its advantages is that it can be done indoors and outdoors, allowing year-round composting. Worm composts can be made in containers filled with moistened bedding.”

Vermicomposting is indeed a nice way to manage our biodegradable scraps/wastes and turn them into something useful for our garden. I found this Guide to Vermiculture and Vermicomposting from the Bureau Plant Industry website which is a useful reference to get us started. The document focuses on the production of organic fertilizer through the action of earthworms. There are many other resources on vermiculture and vermicomposting including a series of brief articles posted on EntrePinoys which will further enhance our understanding. A more comprehensive reference is the Manual of On-Farm Vermicomposting and Vermiculture By Glenn Munroe. The document can also be viewed from the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada.

I recently learned from a fellow blogger  and friend (www.PinoyOrganics.com) that Starbucks has been giving away their used coffee grounds as part of their recycling and reducing waste program. Starbucks dubs it as “Grounds for Your Garden”.

In the Starbucks website, they state that:

We introduced Grounds for Your Garden in 1995, which offers customers complimentary five-pound (2.27-kilogram) bags of used coffee grounds to enrich garden soil. And where commercial composting is available, many stores are able to divert other food waste and coffee grounds from the landfill as well.

I decided to get mine from a Starbucks outlet in Market2, Global City. The staff were very helpful when I inquired. They even offered to pack some more bags for me if I wanted to. I had to decline because I did not bring my car with me. I just got 4 bags which was just enough baggage for me to handle.

Some of the used grounds will go to my compost bin and the remaining will be spread on the sides of my plants at home. The instructions on how to use the discarded grounds are clearly printed on the sticker label. The aroma of the used grounds is still retained which pleasantly fills the air with coffee goodness.  I would have collected more had I known about this program before.

So for the gardeners out there go grab some free used coffee grounds from your nearest Starbucks and feed your plants with it. I wonder though if other coffee shops have a similar program of managing their used coffee grounds.

One of my advocacies is the use of environment-friendly household essentials. The use of these products will definitely help prevent the pollution of our soils and water sources which are essential to good farming and to our health in general. We have been using products like these in our household whenever possible. Products like these are relatively more expensive but I want to view it as something that is less costly in “real” terms because it is safer to us and the environment. Unfortunately, most groceries do not carry these type of products or maybe I was not looking hard enough.

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