The article discusses Starbucks grounds for your garden program. Grounds for your garden is a program where anyone can come into a Starbucks and ask for the used coffee grounds. Starbucks retailers will then present the customer with a 5-pound bag of coffee grounds that can be used in their gardens.
I think this is a great program that Starbucks has in place. Coffee grounds can be used to increase soil quality by adding nitrogen to the soil. Coffee grounds can also be used in composting and promote the health of worms. The fact that instead of throwing away all of these grounds, but offering them to the community to reuse in their gardens is a great idea. The program shows corporate responsibility by Starbucks showing it cares for the environment and the well being of the communities Starbucks are located in.
Reading the article did raise some questions though. Why is Starbucks not promoting this program more? There is a brief summary of this program on the Starbucks website, but the link to the programs page is broken. I also wonder if this program would be practical for small-scale farmers. 5-pounds of grounds at a time is not very much even for the smallest farms. It also would probably depend on the farm, because even though coffee grounds add nitrogen to the soil, coffee grounds can also make soils more acidic. Overall I think Starbuck’s grounds for your garden is a good program, a program that could be adopted by other coffee companies like Dutch Brothers.
http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/grounds-for-your-garden-starbucks-is/
I think that Starbucks was spot on with this idea; I feel that all coffee shops should adopt this policy, not just Dutch Bros. Being such an easy process, this idea would be feasible to even the mom & pop shops. Not only does it help local farmers, but it could also go to improve the back yard gardens that many Americans have started to plant. Kudos to Starbucks.
ReplyDelete