- [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.