| As part of our efforts at GEEKS,
Dianna and I try to minimize waste in any way we can. That includes finding
uses for many things that most restaurants just discard. Or course,
that led us to composting. Every day, there are coffee grounds, vegetable
peelings, egg shells, unused lettuce that's past its prime, etc. We've
set up containers in our kitchen and service area to collect all the organic
stuff that would have gone into the trash at most places. We add
some of the hay that our good customers, the Brunazzi's, gave
us some time back to spruce up the outside of GEEKS
during Halloween and harvest season (the corn cobs they provided for additional
decoration were put up on a hill nearby when we took down the decorations,
and eaten by some field mice during the snowy season). Needless to say,
the compost heap grows faster at our restaurant than the one we used to
have at home (who's ever home anymore?). When it gets farther along, we
intend to use it to grow some of our own herbs, and a small vegetable garden.
Even the coffee and leftover rolls get recycled in one fashion or another. We use the coffee to water the plants that our friend Brenda gave us, or sometimes add some to one of the compost heaps. Rolls that our guests don't eat or take home are put aside, and fed to the Robins, Crows and other birds the next day. We've started putting aside our aluminum cans, so that they too can be recycled. Pennsylvania doesn't have a redemption value on pop cans, nor does it require recycling as we were used to when we lived in the State of California. It just seems to be a responsible thing to do. When we're over in Charleroi to drop by our produce vendor, Big Apple Produce, we drop off the cans for the Cerebral Palsy drive. Dianna is even talking about saving the wine bottles from the wine we use in so many of our preparations and using them to decorate the labyrinth she muses about. We purchased a dehumidifier to help our tired air-conditioning system during the humid months. We were collecting over 5 gallons of water a day, and used it to water plants. Dianna and I would like to encourage each of you to find ways to recycle those items that can be. |