Used coffee grounds help the environment

Today is Earth Day. Celebrated since 1970, Earth Day was created to encourage environmental awareness and create new goals to protect our planet.

If you haven't all ready seen the comic strips in your newspaper or online today, take a look. Comic strip cartoonists are in on the effort, publishing a comic in celebration of Earth Day.

They are many ways to take part in Earth Day efforts, today and every day. One way is to reuse your old coffee grounds.

What's so good about spent coffee grounds? They are especially good as a "green" material for composting. When composted with other "green" and "brown" materials, spent coffee grounds help keep organic waste out of landfills and act as a great natural fertilizer. They provide a good source of nitrogen, magnesium, zinc and amino acids. They attract more earthworms to loosen and balance the pH of soil and help retain water. According to testimonials, adding used coffee grounds to compost makes it rich with nutrients, producing lush and healthy plants.

There are many other uses for spent coffee grounds, including a bunch of fun uses from hair and skin care to clothing dye.

If you brew yours at home or the office, don't throw away those used coffee grounds! If you get your daily fix from a Starbucks or a local coffee shop, ask them for some old coffee grounds. Not all shops offer used grounds to their customers, but Starbucks' "Grounds for Your Garden," an initiative to reuse coffee grounds, offers free bags of the stuff to customers for composting.

So make your own fertilizer from spent coffee grounds, instead of using a product like Miracle Gro, a chemical fertilizer that harms soil. Be sure to add some lime to lower the coffee grounds' acidity level. If you'd rather buy some than make your own, Grow Joe is a natural fertilizer made with used coffee grounds.