Photos By John Nation
Using the Old Bean
Java entrepreneur Gary Heine, 54, is doing a whole lot more than keeping Louisville weird. The co-owner, with business partner Mike Mays, of five Heine Brothers’ Coffee cafes has spent the last 14 months rounding up support and studying urban agricultural techniques — most notably vermicomposting, which uses earthworms to turn organic food matter into a nutrient-rich soil additive — to win citywide enthusiasm for a conservation-minded gardening enterprise he helped form called Breaking New Grounds.
“Four or five years ago, Mike and I were wondering what we could do to run a more sustainable business,” Heine says. “We were already recycling extensively, already selling organic Fair Trade coffee. Well, we produce 60 tons of coffee grounds a year at our stores, and we thought, what if it could — instead of that being a waste product — what if it could be a resource? So we started experimenting with worm composting.”
Since Breaking New Grounds’ first board of directors meeting early last year, the organization has built 16 composting bins from wired-together wood pallets at its pilot-project site — a garden off Newburg Road overseen by Father Joe Mitchell of the Passionist Earth & Spirit Center, a partner in the endeavor. Heine, meanwhile, has undertaken several learning excursions, including six trips to Milwaukee, where a successful urban-farming group called Growing Power conducts workshops on vermicomposting and the commercial possibilities for sustainable community agriculture.
In short, the roughly three-month vermicomposting process includes a “hot” segment during which the organic matter decomposes, reducing its volume by half or more. “Then, after about 12 weeks, when it’s broken down and cooled off,” says Heine, “then you can give it to the worms,” which tunnel through and eat the matter, excreting high-nutrition castings loaded with beneficial micro-organisms and fungi.
The overriding point of the nonprofit Breaking New Grounds project, Heine says, is not only to grow food and flowers (and high-powered compost) to sell, but also to foster neighborhood involvement in organic gardening “so future generations can have more clean water, fresh air and healthy soil than we have, instead of less.” Among current partners in the project are Wild Oats, Whole Foods, Brown-Forman (whose spent distilling grains make great compost) and Louisville Metro government.
“We composted 10 tons of food waste last year,” Heine says, “partially coffee grounds and partially fruit and vegetable waste from Whole Foods and Wild Oats, along with straw and cardboard from our stores. But to do 60 tons we need a home where we have more room.” Finding a large, flat plot of community land has become priority number one. “As soon as we can find a home and scale up,” he says, “there are a lot of (potential partners) interested in that.”
Heine says that Breaking New Grounds has been, for him, “like starting a new business — it’s exhilarating and it’s been tiring. But it gives me great hope — for myself, for my children and for the community.”— Jack Welch
Reinventing the Wheel
It’s not that Patrick Piuma didn’t enjoy sliding into the driver’s seat of his red 1994 Toyota Celica. He actually loved being behind the wheel — still does. But when he returned to Louisville from an overseas class trip last year, he didn’t see a need to fix the minor electrical problem that had sidelined his car. “I went to Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and when I was there I was able to get everywhere by taking a tram, bus, bike or walking,” Piuma says. “When I came back I felt disgusted that I had to drive everywhere.”
Not only did his Celica sit, unused, after he landed stateside in March 2006, but last November Piuma sold the “pseudo sports car” to a buddy. He hasn’t owned an automobile since. “It’s a big leap to get rid of your car,” he admits. “There are times that it would be nice to have one, but I’ve gotten farther away from that.” Now, the 33-year-old student, who is finishing up his last semester at the University of Louisville on the way to a master’s degree in urban planning, rides his LeMond street bike (weather permitting), takes the TARC or, yes, walks for transportation.
It’s a 15-minute bike ride from Piuma’s Highlands home on Shady Lane to downtown’s Urban Design Studio, where he works on Third Street. His preferred route is to ride northwest on Baxter Avenue, then cut through neighborhoods and side streets to get to Broadway, avoiding the traffic-congested Baxter-Bardstown Road conjunction. He’ll pedal west along Broadway before, again, turning to less-traveled roads to complete the commute. The trip takes about an hour when he walks.
“Riding a bike is healthier. It’s cheaper. You don’t have to pay for parking; you don’t have to worry about feeding the meter,” Piuma says. “I also definitely ride because it’s better for the environment,” a way to not spew “a bunch of fumes into the air.”
Piuma’s wife owns a Honda CR-V that the family uses to haul their four-year-old daughter and to visit his parents near Knoxville, Tenn., or hers near Chicago. When possible, though, Piuma introduces his daughter to alternative transportation methods. “I’ve taken her on the bus before, and she likes it,” he says.
As s president of U of L’s Student Planning Organization and a volunteer for the Center for Neighborhoods, he advocates, among other things, green technologies for homes — solar shading or wind power, for example — and the building of more bike lanes on future and existing roads. Even if more bike routes are created, though, Piuma admits that hopping on a LeMond to cruise to work isn’t for everybody.
There was the time a construction truck crushed his bike’s rear tire, hurling him onto the pavement — not to mention the encounters with motorists who honk and shout behind him. The clean version is something like, “The roads are for cars, not bicycles!”
“That’s when I want to just give that person a ticket or revoke their license,” Piuma says. “I want to be like, ‘You obviously don’t know the rules of the road. Bicycles are allowed on here.’”— Josh Moss
Professing for the Planet
While many of her peers are fretting over which bottled-water brand will look best in their backpacks, duPont Manual High School senior Casey Henry worries instead about where those plastic bottles will go when the water is drunk. The 18-year-old Youth Performing Arts School major says that band practice (she’s a flutist) “is one place I encounter people who aren’t into that kind of thing. I’ll see someone throwing away their bottle and say, ‘Hey, you might want to reuse that,’ or, ‘Let’s recycle.’ I try not to nag people, but it comes up a fair amount of times.”
Co-president (with fri/files/storyimages/and classmate Lena Eastes) of Manual’s Environmental Club, Henry first took an interest in environmental issues when she was 13. “I went to this meeting about mountaintop removal — I think I was in eighth grade,” she says. “There was a slide show and it had a really strong impact on me. I’d never heard of mountaintop removal before.
“So I got interested in that issue and started going to Sierra Club meetings and joined the Environmental Club at Manual. It only had like three people in it, but Lena and I got involved and then we brought a lot of our friends. We started out this year with about 40 people.” That number, she says, has dwindled to about 15 regular attendees.
Members took part in a recent Ohio River cleanup conducted by the organization Living Lands & Waters, and the club is pursuing a grant through the Kentucky NEED (National Energy Education Development) Project to partner with Cochran Elementary School counterparts in touting the energy-conserving benefits of compact fluorescent light bulbs.
Two other areas of Henry’s young life are linked to her environmental concerns: her vegetarianism and running she does for Manual’s cross-country team. About the former she says, “I’ve heard that the biggest cause of rainforest destruction in South America is clearing land to raise cattle,” adding that “factory farms have a huge impact on the environment, including leaching chemicals into waterways.” She says she’s seen the Al Gore movie An Inconvenient Truth twice, once when the Environmental Club arranged to hold a showing at Manual.
Her love of cross-country, she says, didn’t directly influence her earth awareness, “but just the fact that I use fields and parks and trails so much — it definitely makes it more real when I hear about thousands of acres of land being destroyed for industrial purposes.”
Asked at what level she’ll carry her involvement into college studies, she says, “It depends on the school. If I go to, say, the College of Wooster (Ohio), they have a really good environmental studies and forestry program, so I’d definitely major in that there. But if I /files/storyimages/up at Centre, they don’t have a major — just a minor. Still, I’ll be involved somehow.”
Meanwhile, she finds whatever opportunities she can to increase public awareness, even nudging acquaintances’ parents. “I’ll say, ‘Oh, wait — you guys don’t recycle?’ and I guess sometimes they don’t appreciate that. But I do it.”— JW
Making Food From Thought
It’s just past 11 a.m. in Kentucky Country Day’s kitchen, and the school’s head chef, Chris Rosier, hovers over a six-burner stove. He mixes a large pot’s contents, his latest batch of spinach and tomato a la Parma, then drops the stirring spoon and slips over to check on the herb-crusted roast pork that’s been cooking for five hours. It’s an ambitious school-cafeteria lunch.
What makes this story more unusual is that up to 25 percent of the food Rosier uses is organic (like the spinach) and about 20 percent is purchased directly from local growers and raisers (like the pork). In addition to produce and meat, when possible, he purchases honey and eggs from local producers. This helps reduce some environmental consequences — most notably, the number of miles delivered and amount of energy expended to bring foodstuffs here from growers in other states or countries, as well as the amount of pesticides applied to those ingredients.
“Our menu is a lot healthier for the kids, and it gives them a more diverse appreciation for the food,” says Rosier, 41, who has been at the school for three years.
The cafeteria isn’t the only place where the chef preaches healthy eating habits. When his kitchen duties /files/storyimages/for the day, he leads an after-school group, teaching third- and fourth-graders basic cooking techniques and how to make healthy snacks. That’s something he didn’t get to do at 610 Magnolia, where he once was a chef. Now, instead of traveling to local markets — particularly the Bardstown Road Farmers’ Market — once or twice weekly for the fine-dining set, Rosier does it for students. It’s a time-consuming job, but he enjoys it.
“I wanted to help children learn to eat better and realize that we have to support our local community to make it grow,” Rosier says. “I wanted to teach children . . . at a younger age to be more conscious and aware of what’s going on — that (genetically modified) foods are bad for you, that chemically produced foods are bad for you.”
Thick-crust pizza, French fries and double-cheeseburgers don’t clutter Country Day’s menu, which Rosier and director of dining services Kathy Foster create “a month or so” in advance. The private school doesn’t have a fryer or serve white bread. Instead, approximately 900 students there — pre-kindergartners through high school seniors — get the likes of New Orleans fettuccini, lemon pepper chicken or scalloped potatoes. “Of course, we want to use organic and local farmers all the time,” he says. “But I just can’t do it yet.”
And it’s not because of money. It can be expensive to shop locally and organically, but Rosier so far has not met any budget restrictions. His problems arise when certain staples (tomatoes for instance) are not in season here or when demand forces supply. “We have to offer chicken nuggets,” he says. “They’ll revolt if we don’t.”
Rosier knows that some students, particularly the younger set, will always want the chicken nuggets or peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches, but he also knows progress is being made. He sees that every time a first-grader selects yogurt over cheesecake. And that’s encouraging.
“I’d like to take this concept and turn it into a business,” he says, grinning as he dumps some more spinach into a glass bowl. “I’d like to take over another school.”— JM
Heading for the Mountains
“I’m a Kentuckian, not just a Louisvillian,” says Mary Dan Easley, and it’s the beauty of her home state that inspires Easley to work on preserving what is left of Appalachian Mountain forests after, according to a federal government estimate, one million acres has been destroyed by mountaintop removal. This mining process levels peaks to extract coal, and what’s left afterwards, Easley says, “resembles a moonscape.”
Easley devotes 20 to 30 hours of volunteer time a week to Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a grassroots community organization founded in 1981 and focused on land reform and environmental justice. “In October of 2005 I went to my first Kentuckians for the Commonwealth meeting and found kind, energetic, like-minded people from throughout the state who love the state,” says the 44-year-old, who also works part-time transporting racehorses from state to state. At this meeting Easley was introduced to the practice of mountaintop removal. Often referred to as “strip-mining on steroids,” it begins with coal companies clear-cutting a forest. “They don’t even bother timbering the land,” says Easley. Explosives are then used to blast up to 1,000 feet off the mountaintop and expose the coal. “Blasting destroys homes, it produces dust and particulate matter in the air people breathe, and it pollutes their drinking water,” says Easley. Groundwater becomes contaminated when headstreams, the sources of mountain creeks and rivers, get buried in rocks and soil that are pushed into them after blasting. Harmful chemicals such as mercury and arsenic leach into the water during the process.
Easley is the chair of the land reform committee for KFTC, a team focused on coal issues. She is the first chair of that committee not residing in Eastern Kentucky, but she can relate: In the 1980s, Easley drove a coal truck in West Virginia, so she can think like a miner. One goal of the committee is to secure passage in Frankfort of the “stream saver bill,” which would make it illegal to bury headwater streams with rubble from blasted mountaintops. She lobbied for it during this year’s General Assembly, when it was stopped in committee, and is involved in pushing for its rehearing during next year’s session.
Easley also wants this statewide issue heard in Louisville. “People in Louisville need to know what is going on,” she says. “There is a lot of empowerment in Louisville (because) the state looks to Louisville as a leader in making change.”— Melissa Duley
Working Hard to Be Easy
On a Saturday morning more than 15 years ago, beneath a punishing August sun at a New Albany park, Bob Braunbeck and his son sat in their idling car, waiting to recycle their trash. It was then, sandwiched between expensive Volvos and Cadillacs, that Braunbeck got the idea: If people had to sp/files/storyimages/a week/files/storyimages/driving their recyclables to a drop-off, wouldn’t they pay to have somebody do it for them? Braunbeck has since turned that thought into Easy-Recycle, a business he’s owned and operated since the early 1990s.
The job description he prefers is a simple one: “I’m a paid scavenger,” he says. Five 11-or-so-hour days a week, Braunbeck picks up, sorts and hauls away more than 220 customers’ newspapers, magazines, cardboard, plastic, Styrofoam, batteries — basically anything that can be recycled in this area. Customers pay $25 per month and a one-time $20 equipment fee that provides a trash can or a laundry bag-like sack for Braunbeck’s services; he then donates to charities (Floyd County Youth Symphony, Stage One and Cabbage Patch Settlement House, among others) 100 percent of the money raised from recycling. Over his company’s first 10 years, Braunbeck recycled more than 1,500 tons and raised nearly $53,000.
“I don’t work for idiots. I work for people who truly care,” Braunbeck says. “People who want good recycling will pay for good recycling.”
By 6:30 a.m. every weekday, Braunbeck is already in uniform — green slacks, a white collared shirt with a green Easy-Recycle logo, and brown sandals with white socks peering through — and driving his 1995 Dodge Ram 2500, a big, white van that has a company logo on its side. Each day’s route is permanently mapped in his brain, and he uses a stack of worn index cards to log when a customer has paid the monthly fee. Depending on the day, Braunbeck travels to upwards of 50 small businesses and homes, allotting five minutes to gather recyclables at each and two and a half minutes to speed to his next stop.
It’s a routine life, a different life than the one Braunbeck lived in the 1970s and ‘80s as director of aerial photography for French ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau. Now, instead of flying a helicopter all over the world, Braunbeck, 62, drives his van to collect recyclables. He has been doing it so long that he can identify sulfate-based paper by the touch.
Braunbeck’s dedication has helped his company grow over the years, but he says he’s taken Easy-Recycle as far as he can. For one, he can’t squeeze many more customers onto his routes. Plus, the grueling hours make it difficult (if not impossible) to take time off. Ask him when his last vacation was and he’ll reply, “Are you counting the time I had pneumonia?” But that doesn’t mean he’s quitting.
“I’ve got to do something, and I refuse to do anything silly,” he says. “I like that I’m doing something and could be starting something that could take off. That’s exciting.”— JM