Dark-roasted fertilizer? A student organization on the University of Arkansas campus is recycling used coffee grounds and converting them to fertilizer to be used in campus flowerbeds.
Enactus, a U of A registered student organization affiliated with an international non-profit organization, began a campus sustainability project called Wasteful Thinking last August. Enactus establishes student programs on college campuses across the nation, encouraging students to apply business concepts in community outreach projects.
Students participating in Enactus’ Wasteful Thinking project recycle coffee grounds into fertilizer. This decreases the amount of waste in campus dining facilities and decreases the amount of synthetic fertilizers used on the campus landscape.
The group is currently seeking volunteers to assist with the collection and composting of the coffee grounds.
“By doing this, the university is working towards the goal of having a green campus by 2020 while saving some money along the way,” said Brianna Feole, current Wasteful Thinking project leader and a junior international economics and business and supply chain management double-major in the Sam M. Walton College of Business.
The Wasteful Thinking project is partnered with Chartwells, the campus dining service provider, specifically the Starbucks located on campus. Rather than discarding the coffee grounds in the trash, Starbucks employees collect their grounds in a container provided by Enactus. Once the containers are full, Starbucks delivers the grounds to the Office for Sustainability, where Feole picks them up to be composted.
“I pick them up, weigh the buckets, record the wet weight, and then add them to our composter,” said Feole. “As of right now, we have collected about 700 pounds of wet coffee grounds.”
Weather permitting, Wasteful Thinking volunteers plan to begin distributing the composted coffee grounds in early December.
“We would like to start the first week of December, since this week is a holiday and the weather is rough,” said Feole.
Once the coffee grounds are fully composted, the plan is to use them on the grounds around the university.
“I have partnered with Mr. (Robert) Caudle with the Physical Plant, who has permitted the use of our coffee ground fertilizer,” said Feole.
The Wasteful Thinking project has grown tremendously and is in need of more student volunteers to help with collecting and composting of coffee grounds, said Feole. As the project continues to expand and grow, there is a larger calling for students to become involved.
“It’s come such a long way,” she said.
After the project has expanded around campus, the next step is to reach out beyond the campus and gather even more used coffee grounds, which can be marketed to the community as an organic fertilizer.
“After our presence on campus is dominant, we plan to expand the project into the entire city of Fayetteville,” said Feole.
According the Enactus website, Enactus is an international non-profit organization that implements community projects created by students, academic and business leaders. Enactus has projects in 36 countries and is located on 1,600 universities. The organization transforms lives and helps students develop talent and the perspective needed to live in a much more challenging and complicated world.
The Enactus RSO will take its Wasteful Thinking project to the Enactus national competition in April 2014.