A few coffee shops, Surrey Hills Coffee is a good example, put outside the shop for passers by to collect for the garden. A pity more do not follow this example.
But what to do with in the garden?
Claimed to be a slug repellent, use as a mulch around plants, add to the compost heap.
Only one way to find out, pick up a bag.
I was quite surprised and not happy, to find in a zip lock plastic bag.
I assume because wet. Only not wet, a little moist maybe.
Cakes rather than loose grounds.
I have spread around a couple of tomato plants.
I will have to obtain more, as omitted runner beans.
To spread organic matter around plants not a good idea, best to compost.
Coffee grounds are what you see the barista tapping out after he or she has made your coffee. If you do not see, it is the loud banging you hear.
Coffee grounds can be used for compost or on your garden.
A few coffee shops put the grounds out in a paper carrier for gardeners to take away. More should follow their good example.
The coffee grounds can be used in cakes, instead of ground coffee.
The coffee grounds can be used for making coffee cups, jewellery, even furniture.
Or can be used for growing oyster mushrooms.
Espresso Mushroom Company using a cycle and trailer, collect the grounds from Small Batch. This explains why I have seen mushroom growing kits in Small Batch, supplied for growing oyster mushrooms at home.
The idea for growing mushrooms on coffee grounds came to the two co-founders of Espresso Mushroom Company after attending a talk by Gunter Pauli from ZERI, when he discussed how smallholder coffee growers were growing mushrooms on coffee pulp on their farms.
Each mushroom kit contains coffee from 100 espressos. What is left over can be used in the compost heap or spread on the garden.
In the natural world there is no concept of waste in time or space. Walk in ancient woodland, there is not growing piles of waste, not unless Man has been dumping waste. The output of one process is the input to another.
We should aim to close the cycle, to emulate these natural cycles, the output of one process the input to another, what we once saw as waste, the raw material for another process.
The ideal use is to use as compost, add to the garden.
3fe use in their garden behind the coffee shop. What they do not use, Littlecress take away use for growing cress, 3fe buy the cress.
The coffee grounds can be used for growing oyster mushrooms.
In Small Batch they have on sale kits for growing oyster mushrooms. When I saw, I was baffled, but did not inquire.
Small Batch supply their coffee grounds to the Espresso Mushroom Company, a mushroom grower, who in turn, supply Small Batch with mushroom growing kits.
The coffee grounds can be used in cakes, instead of ground coffee.
Rosalie McMillan has created the Java Collection, a range of jewellery that uses recycled silver, gold and diamonds combined with material derived from coffee grounds.
The idea to make cups out of coffee grounds came from studying
Product Design in Bolzano, Italy. After countless cups of espresso,
the founder, Julian Lechner, wondered whether the leftover
coffee grounds couldn’t be used for something new.
After numerous trials and experiments, the first prototype of
an espresso cup made from coffee grounds was developed there
in 2009.
The cups are unusual as both reusable and recyclable.
One cup and saucer can be made from the grounds of six cups of espresso, plus natural resins, waxes, oils, cellulose, biopolymers and wood fibre.
The cups include biopolymers. The walls of all plant cells are made of biopolymers, long chain molecules with properties allowing them to be plastically formed, and thereby eliminate use of crude oil based plastics.
At the end of their life, Kaffeform can recycle the cups to form the raw material for 3D printing.
The cups are not 3D printed, are moulded, and 3D printing would probably be more suited to prototype development, but does raise the interesting possibility, if the cups were made available as open source hardware could they be 3D printed locally?
A further question, at the end of their life, can the cups be composted?
The coffee grounds are collected daily from cafés and caterers in
the Berlin area.
In addition to cups, they have now also made a takeaway cup.
A useful comparison would be with the HuskeeCup which uses coffee husks.
It would appear to be a better design than the HuskeeCup.
I have not seen let alone handled or used a Kaffeeform cup, therefore difficult to comment further. But certainly stylish. I would be more than happy to try.
Keithpp's Blog 