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  • (playful, upbeat music)

  • - [Voiceover] Money.

  • It's everywhere.

  • But what happens when your bills get old

  • and need to be replaced by new ones?

  • That means old cash needs to be destroyed.

  • A lot of cash.

  • This is not, however, the story of money growing on trees,

  • but of trees, growing out of money.

  • Well, more like vegetables.

  • (bright music)

  • - We are here at the Federal Reserve Bank in New Orleans,

  • and this is where we shred millions of dollars.

  • My name is Dean Wortha, I'm the lead business analyst

  • for cash services here at the New Orleans Fed.

  • We are the nation's bank.

  • Our job is to make sure that we have a supply of currency.

  • Also part of that is to ensure that we remove unfit,

  • old dirty currency from circulation.

  • So here on average, we shred about six million dollars

  • in dirty money every day.

  • This could be for any number of reasons.

  • It could be because the note has rips in it,

  • holes in it, tears in it.

  • It could have tape on it,

  • it could have graffiti written all over it.

  • We don't want that note going back into circulation.

  • If it has any sort of those qualities,

  • it will be shredded.

  • What we used to do is take all of these currency shreds

  • and they would just wind up as waste, going to a landfill.

  • Now, through a lot of work and effort,

  • we finally figured out a way where we can take these shreds

  • and ultimately recycle them.

  • - [Voiceover] So all that green leaves the Fed

  • and heads to a compost facility

  • where it turns into something quite useful.

  • - What you're looking at right now is 24 million dollars.

  • But the soil that is creates will be priceless.

  • My name is Johnathan Christian.

  • We turn cash into soil.

  • It is definitely one of our secret ingredients.

  • It's little in content, but it's huge in what it provides.

  • Currency that's deemed unfit is brought to our facility

  • at Wooden Materials.

  • From there we go through a simple composting process

  • where we convert that into a healthy soil.

  • Our compost is used primarily by urban farmers

  • in the greater New Orleans area.

  • - [Voiceover] One of these farmers is Simond Menasche.

  • - And this is a million dollar farm.

  • We are making fresh, local food accessible in New Orleans.

  • We've grown veggies, herbs, cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers.

  • The vegetables we grow here are made out of composted cash.

  • It is very fulfilling to be growing,

  • using a material that would otherwise go to waste.

  • One man's trash is another man's treasure.

  • - [Voiceover] And that's the story

  • of how we grow tomatoes out of cash.

(playful, upbeat music)

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