Chris Pieretti wanted to start a business to help people grow vegetables.

With Kitchen Harvest, Inc. he’s doing the next best thing, turning moldy food scraps and pizza boxes into gardening gold, writes Pete Bannan for the Daily Times.

Pieretti, a composting expert, has his business on the Linvilla Orchards farm in Media.

 He turned to selling compost when he discovered many gardeners don’t always work with the right soil conditions.

When he saw a woman in Philadelphia collecting buckets of food scraps, he was intrigued.

 “I thought it was the coolest idea, that you could turn your food scraps into a kind of a garden, the soil,” he said. “I tried to figure out how to do it and make a business out of it.”

He starting composting at the Hillside Farm on the Elwyn campus in 2010, then moved to Linvilla Orchards when that farm closed.

Linvilla had always accepted yard waste so Pieretti was simply expanding their operation.

He uses leaves, food scraps collected from about 350 residents a month, and spent grains from the Sterling Pig Brewery in Media.

Contributions also roll in from Villanova University, Haverford College and Bryn Mawr College.

Read more at the Daily Times about Chris Pieretti and Kitchen Harvest, Inc.