Ethically Consume that Mocha Joe

It's one of the vices most of us are currently harboring, the buzz in the morning or that rush of energy in the middle of an all nigher. It is the friend of the overworked and under rested, the ones looking to push the envelope of productivity and keep living at a frantic pace, and one of the World's leading imports and exports. No, it isn't an illegal drug, but it could be argued by some activists as such, it's coffee. With many people unable to imagine their days without their morning cup (or their mid-morning, lunchtime, afternoon time, evening, and midnight cups too!) coffee is a growing industry but not new by any means. So how can you help promote a greener Earth and be an ethical consumer with your own grinds?

Actually, being that coffee grinds are all natural and grown from the Earth they make for excellent remedies to your own garden as compost. I know many people who simply garden for the sheer joy it brings them, but due to the current level of deforestation or paving of the green grasses that once ran so aplenty worldwide, working to replace at least a portion of what has been destroyed is a necessity. While harboring a flowerful home garden may not do much in the way to immediately save the Rain forests, it at least gives back an admittedly small portion of the past greenery of Mother Earth. When so many business and developers are looking to expand and build, I'm always alarmed at how whenever I return to a place that I hadn't been to in a while I'm met with more stores, shopping malls, corporations, and less and less foliage.

In areas where the numbers of cars vastly outpace the number of trees, working to even the gap is a vast undertaking but something that is needed. And along with planting what trees and flowers that we can, we can use the abundance of coffee grinds currently being served up each and every day. Coffee grinds contain the perfect concentration of nitrogen to carbon ratio making them ideal for compost piles. Then that compost can be returned to the soil to provide the rich nutrients plants thrive on. Further, coffee grinds can help protect your gardens from slugs when they are dashed atop the soil around your precious buds. So how do you take the coffee grinds from your morning routine to the soil? Well you can simply keep around a used coffee can and put the used grinds in. Because the grinds will also make for a conducive environment for mold, you will want to unload those grinds from your kitchen and into your gardens regularly.

Being an ethical consumer doesn't only have to mean that you take care to avoid items that aren't recyclable or nonrenewable, but that you can also make the most of what holds the potential to be reused. In putting your coffee grinds into your gardens and working to make the world a green place (quite literally) you are doing the environment a service, and today those good deeds are needed in aplenty!