Todd, you need to visit the Soils, Compost, and Mulch forum! It's filled with lots of crazy composters.

lol me one of the newbies .

Todd, a number of years ago when I was in the local dahlia society we had a member, Mr. Wilder, who worked for Stockham Valve. He lived in Center Point. For many years he had hauled burned coffee from Red Diamond Coffee & Tea to his garden. These were beans which had burned while being roasted and went through the grinder but were discarded instead of being bagged and sold. His soil was so soft and fluffy you could run your hands into it about 9 inches. I can see fruits and veggies making an odor but I don't see coffee and tea making odors. I'll bet you could get used coffee grounds from Starbucks and other coffee shops.

Starbucks has a policy of giving away any grounds they have to anyone that wants them. Some shops have them pre-bagged, but I have yet to meet a shop that wasn't thrilled to give you the whole garbage bag full, empty their machines and scrounge up any other they have around..

The exception is the small in-store kind shops -- they usually don't have room to separate their trash and they will refer to the closest stand-alone shop.

There are two Starbucks on Hwy 280. I guess I need to talk to them about collecting their coffee grounds. Something for me to do for the New Year.

Todd,
I agree with you on this. It's sad the way we all throw stuff out. Not only can it be used as compost but we could also feed pigs and other livestock (I know out in Vegas some farmers go to the hotels and get all the food from them and cook it up and feed it to the livestock..I seen that one on Dirty Jobs...lol)
I wish more people would think like this!
We have livestock at my place in Ohio (soon to be in Alabama) and one day a guy stopped me as I was out with the horses. He asked me what I would charge him if he would come clean out my pasture (he wanted it for his garden..) I about fall over. Me, charge him...Heck, no... come and get all you want. I even helped him load it up. I figure if it is helping us both out why the heck would I charge him.
I love the coffee grounds idea also. We drink a ton of coffee here and I use it now for the strawberries (they seem to like it.)

Dora Renee' Wilkerson

Here is a link that might be useful: Y2-K Hippie

When I was a child (growing up in the mid-20th century) there was a man who came by the school everyday to pick up the milk and food which was discarded from lunch. He fed it to his pigs. He was doing the Jefferson county school system a favor by disposing of it for free. Later he was stopped because someone else complained because they weren't getting free slop for their hogs and dogs. This should have been a situation of "first-asked" but I'm sure our screwed up legal system would have seen it differently.

I have been an advocate of recycling for many years. I believe we should build a long tin roofed shed at every garbage dump. The garbage should be dumped on a conveyor. The able bodied (A Medicaid paid physical) people on government assistance who receive food cards, rent supplements, Medicaid, etc.; should be required to sort through the garbage. Plastics, paper, glass, metals should be sorted and sold to recyclers. If they are able bodied then the recycling work would serve as public services work in exchange for taxpayer subsidies. If they miss a day's work without a doctor's excuse they would be cut that amount of pay from their government dole. Reclaimed wood and paper could be burned to generate electricity to run the recycling plant, shredders, blowers for the boilers and smoke scrubbers. Extra electricity would be sold to APCO. Ash could be sold or given away as soil additives (potassium, some phosphorus and magnesium). Some shredded would could be sold as mulch or composted to sell to gardeners. I watched an episode of Dirty Jobs today at a metal recycling center. They make a ton of money (no pun intended) from tons of metals. For those sorted who can't recognize iron from non-ferrous metals, the sorters had a magnet around their necks. Well, if I was a politician, I couldn't get elected dawg catcher on this platform. One of the most important aspects is we would save landfill space and recover some of the cost of operating dumps.

You think like I do Terry.
Jill

On the topic of getting compostables from Starbucks - I found last year that putting spent coffee grounds on my raised beds completely stopped my snail and slug problems. Those slimy little beasties just couldn't handle coffee grounds.

That's great news, frood! I've been collecting Starbbuck's coffee grounds for a few weeks now (using them to help with Lasagna bed construction). They seem very happy to give them to someone to use in their garden and I'd been wondering if there were any other uses besides what I'm using them for now or adding to my compost pile. So, did you just sprinkle them around your plants or apply more liberally than that? Was one application enough or did you find you needed to reapply after a while?