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From "Senioritis" to Sustainable Solutions

Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez sat in their Business Ethics class at UC Berkeley on a beautiful California spring day.  They paid sporadic attention in class, satisfied with their job offers in the investment banking and consulting fields and suffering from “Senioritis.” That day, however, a random fact brought up in class caught their attention.  Gourmet mushrooms could potentially be grown on 100 percent recycled coffee grounds.  Complete strangers, in a class of almost 100 students, the two were put in touch by their professor after separately reaching out to him for more information, both intrigued by the waste-to-wages and waste-to-food model.  Filled with curiosity, they got together to work. A fraternity kitchen soon became a mini-science experiment with hopes of exploring the unknown world of gourmet mushrooms and recycled coffee grounds.

Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez, founders of Back to the Roots, have grown their sustainable food business without any venture capital or equity funding.

Their first nine experiments became contaminated within a few days, but the tenth batch produced gorgeous oyster mushrooms.  These less-than-gourmet mushroom connoisseurs needed to see how their mushrooms measured up to the rest of them.  Surely, the head chef at the best restaurant in town, Chez Panisse, would be a worthy critic.  The chef began to sauté their mushrooms and placed a large spoonful in his mouth. His face instantly lit up as he said “whoa, these are delicious!”  It was then that they both realized they were on to something. 

A few weeks later, they received a small grant of $5000 from their Chancellor.  They decided to take a leap of faith and turned down their investment banking and consulting job offers to become full-time urban mushroom farmers.  Thus, in the spring of 2009, Back to the Roots was born.  After six months of experimenting, they sold their first 3.14 pounds of mushroom to the Berkeley Whole Foods in October of 2009.  Their production quickly grew to 500 pounds a week and spread to the entire Northern California region.  Customers fell in love with the idea of growing sustainable gourmet mushrooms, inspiring Nikhil and Alejandro to launch the Grow-Your-Own Mushroom Garden.  With this new initiative, anyone could sustainably grow their own gourmet mushrooms in as little as ten days…right out of a little brown box, and all on recycled coffee grounds.

Working Together for Clean Water and Strong Communities

EPA is always looking for new ways to keep communities clean and healthy, while creating jobs and fostering economic growth. One way we’re accomplishing this goal is through innovative, sensible and cost-effective investments like green infrastructure.

When it rains, stormwater picks up oil, pesticides and other chemicals on our streets and buildings and carries those pollutants into nearby waters. Communities have traditionally considered this stormwater to be wastewater that needs to be stored and treated – something that’s very costly to cities and towns on a budget. Green infrastructure manages stormwater by treating it like the valuable resource it is, working with Mother Nature, not against her. By using permeable pavements, rain barrels, landscape changes and other techniques, green infrastructure changes capture and filter stormwater so our waters will stay clean.