SEATTLE -- As part of its annual effort to promote environmental awareness in stores, Starbucks invites customers to pick up a free bag of spent coffee grounds from any neighborhood Starbucks store through the year-round Grounds for Your Garden program. Starbucks stores package spent coffee grounds in recycled bags and offer them free of charge on a first-come, first served basis.The program, which began in 1995, offers complimentary coffee grounds every day of the year to customers for use in gardens and compost bins. Today, this waste reduction program has become a popular way for gardeners across North America to enrich their gardens. Starbucks also donates grounds to parks, schools and nurseries as a soil amendment.Coffee Grounds make up the heaviest portion of waste in Starbucks stores, making the Grounds for Your Garden program a significant waste-reduction opportunity. Coffee grounds act as a green material with a carbon-nitrogen (C-N) ratio of 20-1. They make an excellent addition to home gardening compost.Starbucks offers the following tips for gardening with coffee grounds:Mix grounds with soil around acid-loving plants and watch them flourish Add brown leaves and grass clippings to mulch to help balance the pH of the soil Mix grounds into compost to accelerate the composting process Grounds should be no more than 25% of any one compost pile's content To counter acidity of coffee grounds, add 1 teaspoon of lime or wood for each 5 pounds of coffee grounds in your compost pile Help a worm bin flourish by feeding worms with coffee grounds combined with brown materials Starbucks Corp. is a retailer, roaster and brand of specialty coffee in the world, with retail locations in North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific Rim."