it's being used, before mixing the ground eggshells into the coffee grounds. Just struck me that drying may change how well it acts as compost?

Any thoughts?

Great article! The municipalities will have to add coffee ground recycling pickups to their other recycling!

Speaking of which, I was dropping off leaves for composting at the town recycling center and saw a metal shelving unit which I could use in by gotty basement. I asked if I could take it--and was told the town is now considering removal of any articles from the dump and recycing center to be theft of town property!!! Guy told me there was a camera, but he wouldn't stop me.

Bet that new interpretation was put in place when the price paid for junk metals and even plastics and newspapers was sky high. Now, iirc, townships are once again having to pay to have it taken away or are getting very little for their recyclables.

Hey! If the cities won't offer curbside coffee grounds pick up, maybe a new form of rag men (and women) will develop, with people going around to pick up the coffee grounds. Of course, that worked when people worked at home or there were housewives or servants there to make the rags, etc., accessible to the rag man....

Hard times comin'--might work!

we should give tax breaks or rebates if Starbucks and Dunkin and all coffee chains set up systems to get all their used grounds to companies that will turn them into biodiesel.

fast food places with their grease too.

I remember going to a protest march in 2002 (or 2003) and being lectured by the "pro-hemp lobby" about how hemp will solve all of the worlds problems. Seriously, all of the problems, from sewage and waste to peace on earth.

To grow more food. For example, dig a ditch, chuck in a heap of hot compost or manure, cover it up, plant a heat-loving plant like tomatoes or watermelon over it and extend the growing season. Or get your starts started earlier, esp. if you combine it with a cold-frame. Guess that would be a lukewarm frame. Anyway, when the ground over the compost/manure cools down, you know you can either turn the soil or plant right over it with plants you usually plant.

amber, I vow to have you planting a garden, even if in a bucket. I'll entice you with the thrill of sprouting things. I reckon if I'm going to persuade you to give it a try, I should stop mentioning things like "manure," though. or at least try to redefine manure as something other than what it is...Huh. That won't work. Shit is shit and calling it something else doesn't make it smell prettier.

How about if I try guilt? Say, "For evey tomato plant you fail to plant, a neocon gets a blow job."

Ha. Bet that'll work.

We're looking into the industrial hemp thing. While technically not illegal to grow hemp, you need a DEA permit and have to do a lot of stuff to even be considered. I don't think they've ever granted one, but one of the fab GF's brothers is a fed agent and we're going to see if he knows anyone in the DEA we can talk to.

For the record, I make hemp jokes because, well, I think they're funny, but the restriction on industrial hemp is retarded and should be pointed to and laughed at at every opportunity. Hemp is a beneficial plant that can grow just about anywhere. it doesn't need special care and the products derived range from the food you eat to the toilet paper you use to---finish the eating process.

I've eaten hemp seeds, but I've never drunk hemp milk, which, Albert informs me, when mixed with chocolate is "hippie crack."

Okay, so how big a squasher do I need for this coffee ground thing? Can I use the same one I suggested we could squash the old people with? Oh, come on, I'll clean it off between uses. I have a hose.

My neighbor has a a 20-ton press. I wonder if I could just mash them through something like a cheese press and then separate oil from liquid and any other crap.

GQ, you're a scientist. Does this sounds all scientific-y to you?

Seriously, I might just have to try this.

Lots of potential benefits, including not having to use gas to haul garbage outside the city.

I wonder if the brewing process loosens up the oils any. I may have to be scientific, or I could just start squashing stuff and see what happens.

I wonder if I could make soap out of coffee oil as well. The article you cite mentions that---saponification as a byproduct of biodiesel process---but I wonder if I could brew up a batch of soap that used coffee oil. Maybe as the scent only. I'll have to experiement.

I was going to try the old way of making lye water with wood ashes and rainwater for soap anyway, so I reckon I could mix up some with coffee oil.

And I wonder if coffee oil performs better than WVO straight in the tank without further processing.

Provided I can squash enough to make it worthwhile.

Great. Two more projects to add to my list of shit to do.

I have an idea for using the Himalayan blackberry brambles we have invading everywhere here, but more for fiber or paper. Google whispers seductively that kudzenol.com is run by Agro*Gas in Tennessee.

From a crappy website, http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforu...

"Mr. Mizell, a locksmith who has spent most of his 54 years tinkering, was not about to throw in the towel in his fight, not into a patch of weeds anyway.

Kudzu is a plant. It's full of natural sugars just like corn. It thrives in the South. So, what if you distilled the stuff?

On a Cleveland hillside, Mr. Mizell and wife, Sue, harvested lots of kudzu.

"Oh, yes, we got some strange looks," his wife admitted.

The vines went into a chipper and then home and into a food processor. Then "Moonshine 101" came in. Mr. Mizell rigged a still on his mother's patio. The resulting 80-proof liquid, he said, smells like rum.

Five gallons of kudzu mash equals a half gallon of ethanol. But Mr. Mizell thinks he can improve the yield with some better equipment.

"That thing over there," he pointed to the still, "is much like the African Queen, leaking and belching steam..."

Just as computer chips made Silicon Valley in California, Mr. Mizell figures the smothering vine can turn East Tennessee into Cellulose Valley and help keep corn in the food chain.

He and business partner Tom Monahan attended the state's first BioTenn Conference earlier this year. Now that he has proven kudzu can become ethanol, Mr. Mizell is looking for a grant, or an investor, to build a more sophisticated distillery.

"With a brush cutter, a wood chipper and a homemade still I can produce a barrel of fuel for under $80." "

Run my car and I can make rum drinks with it?

It's a Christmas miracle.

Clean coal my big butt. Criminey, I get angry about this fast. Bet the coal people are pretty happy now that unions have been crushed.

ethanol for E85/Flexfuel mixture from whatever organic material, yeast, sugar, and water we decide to make.

Coffee, alcohol, hemp, soap---what are we missing? Well, I am thinking of figuring out a way to get fiber from the blackberry brambles or at least pulp for papermaking as they are an invasive nuisance and can take down trees if you don't cut them back.

I'm not real interested in biodiesel manufacture, though straight veg-based oil use interests me. Need a duel tank set up to start the engine and get the fuel up to temp, right? If I squash the coffee grounds from the coffee we drink, I'll be able to get enough coffee oil to drive to the Espresso Connection to get a latte.

If we get to grow industrial hemp for feedstock, fiber, and food, I have to squash the seeds for the oil, to be drunk or used in an engine.

Biodiesel is pretty common here, so there's not much chance the deputies will get too upset seeing a rig. We know a lot of them, anyway, and they know us--"The lesbians who bought the drunk's place who just built that crazy strawbale house. Not the lesbians who bought Cliffords' place and don't know how to keep it landscaped, not the lesbians with the alpacas. The crazy straw bale lesbians. They live next door to The Arm Lopper."

It's a small place.

And no wonder your hibiscus gets busted if it goes around all potted all day. I mean, you have to call a halt to imbibing at some point. Unless by "poted" you mean that other kind of hemp.

The kind that leads to Doritos.

You know, running away when it's time to clean the catbox. That takes energy.

I approve of coffee-flavored cake, but I also approve of coffee-flavored breakfast cereal and coffee-flavored asparagus because that is part of the magic that is me. Coffee goes with everything is my motto.

We're between Monroe and Sultan. Go to Monroe and stand at the corner of Old Owen and Highway 2, across from the Monroe Espresson Connection at the Chevron station and by the Bank of America where the armored truck was robbed by D.B. Tuber, and just start yelling for me. I'll come down and you can follow me to the back of beyond where our house is. Otherwise, you will never find us.

Oh, and how are you with a shovel? If you suck at shoveling, how are you with a broom? If you suck at sweeping, how are you at carrying an endless stack of things? If you suck at carrying, how are you at buying donuts?

If you suck at buying donuts, well, there's no hope.