In Panama, the industry leader in coffee production, Rogers Family Company, has found a new technique for removing waste produced by their coffee plants. Coffee pulp is a byproduct of the coffee plants, and is extremely bad for the environment. It is well known that coffee plants use many pesticides to aid the growing of their plants. This is then turned into the pulp, which rots over time. Once it rains it gets washed away into local waterways. Rogers Family Company has found out that worms from California actually convert this pulp into an organic fertilizer which puts nutrients back into the depleted soil. In a test at a local model farm in Panama, they saw that these worms eliminated over 5000 tons of rotted coffee pulp, and prevented it from polluting the Caldera River, a local waterway. In my opinion this is a very economically feasible idea, because these worms are converting essentially pollution into organic fertilizer. This seems like a great way to get rid of waste without spending too much money.
--Sid Ganesan
