How To Minimize Coffee Waste?
The third wave of coffee, in addition to the great coffee itself, is ethical in the coffee industry, with boutique coffee focusing on traceability, and we can help the coffee-producing countries by buying a delicious cup of coffee.
But the process of growing coffee proved not to be environmentally friendly. In fact, coffee causes pollution of significant water resources, destroys water sources in coffee-producing countries and causes loss of benefits to producers.
According to the American Boutique Coffee Association (SCAA), the wastewater caused by coffee during wet treatment is 40 times higher than the average amount of sewage consumed in ordinary cities, so much of it has a huge impact.
Fortunately, this is not the only way that more reuse can be applied to coffee by-products, which means that coffee can not only protect the environment, but also lead to further economic growth.
The caffeine calculator on roastercoffees.com is a useful online calculator to help you drink better coffee at home in a healthier way.
Waste caused by coffee cultivation
So why is coffee growing unfriendly to the environment?
Let’s think about the structure of the coffee fruit, the pulp, the pectin layer, the sheepskin layer, the silver skin and the coffee beans. In order to get the innermost layer of coffee beans, you usually discard the outer four layers, preferably not.
The fact that many coffee-producing countries are low-income countries is a major issue, and often they are unable to deal with the wasteful water and drain the wastewater indiscriminately, causing water pollution.
Wait, when will water be used?
This problem is often encountered in washing procedures, where the fruit is treated with water and soaked in water, during which time the fruit glue layer is detached and the remaining material of the coffee fruit is detached, which is left in the water, which retains the nutrients of the fruit and optimizes the water.
Enrichment is the abundance of nutrients in lakes or any water, which often occurs in agricultural areas. The process of eutrophication causes too much organic material, such as algae, which causes a lack of oxygen in the water.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) studied the eutrophication of the Ethiopia River and found that the oxygen content in the lower waters of the river beside the coffee garden was significantly inadequate, while the nitrogen content was rising steadily, which could cause physical harm to humans.
Read More: A Complete Coffee Roast Levels Chart
How do coffee producers take advantage of these residues?
But these discarded fruit residues are more useful than we thought, The Habtamu Lemma Didanna study at Wolaita Sodo University in Ethiopia found that, Coffee flesh is a valuable resource, especially for farmers, Didanna found that coffee pulp can replace commercial feed that feeds up to 20% of cattle. And its nutritional content and the effect of increasing the weight of cattle are not different from feed. These can save 30 per cent on the cost of animal feed, representing the economic potential of coffee pulp for agriculture in coffee-growing countries.
Coffee flesh is not just a good fertilizer for cattle farmers. After dry and partial fermentation, coffee flesh is a good growth fertilizer for mushrooms. Mushrooms, like mushrooms, often take months to grow and, if helped by coffee by-products, only weeks to grow, giving farmers a second good source of income; According to the New Agricturist website, coffee producers in Tanzania raise their incomes from growing mushrooms of high economic value, which are grown and harvested throughout the year thanks to the rapid growth of mushrooms assisted by coffee flesh. The proceeds from these sales have helped them to establish educational funds and expand the land of livestock farmers.
How to reduce coffee residue at home?
Coffee lovers in non-coffee-producing countries may not be able to get coffee by-products from their estates, which does not mean that we can do nothing and we can grow our own mushrooms. Yes, people living in the city can do it, and mushrooms are ideal for planting spaces like window sill gardening, where many independent coffee shops start using coffee grounds, such as WoodFruit, a company specializing in mushrooms.
For industrial use, Bio-Bean in London has developed technology to turn coffee grounds into advanced biomass fuels, such as biomass particulate fuels. They claim that biomass fuels can be the source of energy to drive vehicles, while biomass particulate fuels can increase indoor and in-store temperatures. In fact, they hope that one day their biomass particulate fuel will even use coffee slag to increase temperatures in particular stores.
The potential power of Bio-Bean is amazing, not only to provide an environmentally friendly way to warm up, but also to drastically reduce London’s coffee residue. It is speculated that Bio-Bean should be able to reuse 30,000 tons of coffee residue in the city of London. Analytically, estimating 200,000 tons of coffee residue in London, we only talk about reducing 15 percent of that residue, which comes from coffee residue.
How will we deal with coffee residue in the future?
From the past to the present, coffee lovers look at the issue of wasting coffee and change is imminent. The rise of companies like Bio-Bean and the growing number of studies on coffee by-products seem to have no unreasonable advice, and in the near future we may see coffee shops and coffee producers repurposing coffee slag.
Excited? So coffee lovers, now pick up our coffee dregs and recycle them!
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