Coffee helps keep local businesses grounded in environmental mission

A couple of months ago, Lexington landscape architect John Carman was pondering what would make a good Earth Day project for his firm.

As landscape architects, they deal with the environment on a daily basis and Earth Day seemed like a great time to do something nice. He settled on coffee grounds.

“Because I like tomatoes and tomatoes love coffee grounds,” Carman said. Over the past several years, he collected the coffee grounds in his office, and took them home to compost for his tiny backyard garden.

He wanted to aim for something bigger.

“I got this grandiose idea a few months ago … Can we gather coffee grounds from a lot of places and take them someplace?” he said. He set a goal to collect 1,000 pounds of coffee grounds and began recruiting local businesses to help.

He and his office staff drink around four pots of coffee a day. They figured four pots of coffee grounds and filters over a month’s time would fill a 5-gallon bucket and weigh about 20 to 30 pounds. Fifty 5-gallon buckets would be at least half a ton of grounds and filters saved from the landfill.

Meanwhile, office and marketing manager Beth Workman started looking for someplace to take them. She called Ryan Koch, director of Seedleaf, a local gardening non-profit that has set up a composting program. Seedleaf has partnered with GreenHouse 17, formerly known as the Bluegrass Domestic Violence Program, to set up a community garden on 40 acres that is cultivated by survivors and staff.

The gardens supply produce for the shelter’s kitchen and much more. In 2015, GreenHouse 17 set up a flower CSA (community-supported agriculture) program; paying members receive weekly bouquets of flowers.

Workman learned that GreenHouse 17 would be happy to take as much compost as Carman could provide.

“I was thrilled to learn that we would be partnering with GreenHouse17, as I used to work at the Kentucky Coalition Against Domestic Violence administering grants, and I never lost my passion for helping survivors of domestic violence,” Workman said.

She and some of the other participants plan to visit the farm this spring.

“The women who are part of this program are trying to turn some negative energy into some positive energy,” Carman said.

Lexington businesses including Coffee Times, the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office, Big Ass Solutions, ALT32, EOP Architects, Omni Architects, Shrout Tate Wilson Engineers, EA Partners, Tate Hill Jacobs Architects, Nomi Design, Tates Creek High School, Fayette County Public Schools Main Office and many more — as well as a handful in Louisville, where Carman has a satellite office — signed on to collect coffee grounds too.

With three weeks to go, Carman said they are halfway to their goal and might exceed it by quite a bit. Turns out offices drink a lot of coffee.

“Some of these coffee places fill up a bucket a day,” he said. “I think we’re going to get closer to 2,000 pounds. Imagine, a ton of coffee grounds.”

That’s going to make a lot of happy tomatoes.

This story was originally published April 8, 2016 at 1:38 PM with the headline "Coffee helps keep local businesses grounded in environmental mission."