Welcome to Breaking New Grounds

Breaking New Grounds is a sustainable pilot system to transform a plentiful waste product into a healthy, living soil, create neighborhood gardens, nutritious food, sustainable jobs and teach young people how this simple process can give birth to amazing possibilities. The Breaking New Grounds concept is to develop with local farmers and other partners across the city a neighborhood-based, community food system that will:

• Grow food, grow farmers and grow jobs
• Empower local farmers, our neighbors and ourselves to create healthy worm compost, bountiful organic gardens, nutritious food, neighborhood-based economic development and community from food and other waste that is currently landfilled
• Provide healthy food to neighbors; and
• Provide new job skills and incomes in neighborhoods where residents are underemployed.

Our Plan

Starting in May 2006, Gary Heine and another board member, Brian Barnes, began a "hot" composting pilot project using coffee grounds from Heine Brothers', food waste from local groceries, straw, wood chips, cardboard and coffee chaff (a waste skin from the coffee roasting process). These materials provide the carbon- and nitrogen-based materials, and in the correct proportions, needed for great composting.

The composting has continued monthly with the help of a dedicated group of community volunteers. In 2006, 14 compost bins were built and 21,000 pounds of coffee grounds, vegetable and fruit waste, cardboard, straw, coffee chaff, and woodchips were composted. After twelve weeks, the materials in a compost bin break down enough to feed to the 60,000 worms in our vermicomposting operation. Once the worms ingest this material and excrete it, it becomes vermicompost, a rich soil additive with significant nutritional, disease-suppressing and water-holding capabilities.

At the current composting rate, Breaking New Grounds will compost over 100 tons of food waste in 2011.

Over the next three years, Breaking New Grounds plans to scale its composting operations to a point where we will be composting up to 200 tons of food waste per year. In order to do this, we require a permanent “home” of a few acres of land. We will also need to establish mutually empowering relationships with people, organizations and enterprises throughout our community.

Our three year goals include the following:

• Collect coffee grounds from Heine Brothers' Coffee and food waste from local groceries for composting
• Produce worm compost and sell it by the bag in Heine Brothers' Coffee stores and in the same local groceries and gardening stores
• Grow food year around in hoop houses for sale to local restaurants
• Introduce a compost and community food system-focused curriculum into local schools
• Teach others across the city how to work, play and help transform each other and our community in neighborhood-based community food systems