Help Your Green Roosevelt Island Neighbors (GRIN) Compost Starbucks Coffee Grounds At The Community Garden And Support Big Reuse Food Scrap Drop Off Site At Saturdays Farmers Market

Roosevelt Island Garden Club Compost Chair Anthony Longo reports:

Dear Green Roosevelt Island Neighbors (GRIN),

Calling all Roosevelt Islanders who care about the environment! We want to connect people and support greening initiatives of all kinds on Roosevelt Island. We are gardeners and Girl Scout leaders, restaurant managers and bloggers, producers and teachers, and more. We are an informal group of people working on varied kinds of service for Roosevelt Island and our environment.

Come work with us as we make our beautiful neighborhood even more "green!" We are currently looking for people for two specific projects. Students interested in community service are welcome. Long term or short term commitments welcome.

Here's how you can help GRIN.

Bring used coffee grounds to compost.

Every week, a group of us are already saving almost 10 5-gallon buckets

of used Starbucks coffee grounds from the landfill and hoping to add Main Street Sweets coffee to the program as well. Coffee raises the temperature

of the composting, breaking organic materials down faster

to create nutrient-rich compost for trees and plants

right here on Roosevelt Island! It also reduces methane gas by keeping the coffee out of the landfill. We could use more help getting the Starbucks Grounds for the Garden to the compost area and would be glad to share with other garden sites or composters as well.

Also, help support and promote our Roosevelt Island Food Scrap Drop Off site run by NYC Compost hosted by BigReuse

 on Saturdays at the Farmer's Market.

We could use your help to spread the word to get more people to collect food scraps, help set-up and take-down the compost table/bins, or give the staff a lunch/bathroom break. Through this program Roosevelt Islanders have already diverted more than 6 tons of food scraps from landfill in the past 7 months.

According to he Roosevelt Island Garden Club:

Grounds for the Garden is a corporate program that Starbucks began in 1995. We are fortunate that Ryan, manager of our Roosevelt Island Starbucks, and Anthony, RIGC Compost Chair, got together and formed a plan along with Julia, a member, and Aiesha, a new associate. After donating food grade buckets and covering them with our logos, we began making regular pick ups at Starbucks .... The coffee grounds go into our RIGC compost piles and provide nitrogen rich ph balanced ingredients that are working like magic!

Starbucks manager Ryan is seen below handing over buckets of coffee grounds to Anthony for composting.

Starbucks adds:

Starbucks serves freshly-brewed coffee to millions of customers each day. But many may not know they can also pick up a free bag of used coffee grounds to enrich their gardens and compost.

Starbucks started its Grounds for Your Garden program in 1995, which is offered on a first-come, first-served basis in participating stores where local codes permit. Even the packaging has been reused – baristas scoop spent coffee grounds into the empty bags originally used to ship espresso beans to stores....

More information on the Roosevelt Island Garden Club available at their web site.