Grounds For Your Garden - Easy Compost from Starbucks

Hello readers! I hope you all had an amazing weekend. My weekend was spent making coffee at Starbucks.

I'm fortunate enough to only work on the weekends, making a little extra money to help with groceries and whatnot. The rest of my week is spent at home with my Little Man, cleaning house, running errands, etc. I'd love for my entire week to be like this, but it's simply not possible at the moment. (Hopefully soon, though!) So for the time being, every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, you can find me in Macon, slinging coffee and burning myself. (I'm very accident prone, if you haven't caught on to that already.)

The next time you're at a Starbucks, look around the store a bit. You'll probably notice what appears to be a bucket that is meant to be used as a trash can. It isn't. (So please don't put trash it in, thanks!) This bucket is home to large bags full of coffee grounds, completely free for the taking! Throughout the day, we go through a LOT of coffee. (Understatement.) Instead of tossing all the coffee grounds, we fill 5 lb bags with them and leave them out for customers to take. Coffee grounds are great to use in compost, and ours are 100% free. No purchase necessary.

Starbucks started the Grounds For Your Garden program way back in 1995. (How old was I? Seven.) Since then, Starbucks stores across the nation have given away thousands of bags of used coffee grounds every single day. In one day, my store fills approximately five bags full of brewed coffee grounds as well as grounds from our espresso machines. If you compost, stop by your local store and stock up! And if you don't, picking up a bag of grounds is a great way to start.


Here's a great how-to on how to use Starbucks coffee grounds in your compost.

Now that the weekend work at the coffee shop is over, it's time to make some more baby food! Organic applesauce is next on the list, and I'll be posting all the details here.

- Mother Nature Mom