Five Uses For Coffee Grounds
Don’t let your leftover coffee grind you down.
The United Kingdom creates some 500,000 tonnes of coffee waste per year according to reports. Unfortunately, the majority of those used grounds are put into the trash and make their way to landfill sites.
But we don’t need to throw these grinds away. Here are five different ways that you can put your grounds to good use, from the practical to the ingenious.
Compost
Perhaps the most obvious suggestion on the list, but one that is always worth mentioning.
Did you know that coffee grounds are packed full of nitrogen, a vital nutrient that forms part of the fertilising holy trinity?
The nitrogen helps create and maintain heat inside the compost pile, whilst also regulating moisture levels. When coupled up with carbon-rich products like leaves (and even biodegradable coffee filter papers!), the two come together and speed up the entire composting process which will give you a fantastic, natural fertiliser in no time at all!
Worms also love coffee grounds and healthy soil loves worms.
It’s a no-brainer.
So don’t empty the contents of your Knock Out Drawer into the bin, put them in your compost pile instead!
Clothing
When you saw Vanessa Hudgens and Hilary Duff state of social media that they were wearing coffee-infused jeans they weren’t telling fibs, nor were they trying to pull an extremely late April Fools’ joke on the rest of us.
Their promotional tie in with an American retailer may have garnered a lot of headlines and publicity, but the practice of using coffee grounds to create clothes has been going on for a while now.
A couple of years ago a Taiwanese company with a history of creating recycled garments used coffee in a line of shirts.
More recently, one online store released some odour neutralising coffee-infused socks and followed those up with an upmarket blazer that was made from a coffee-infused polyester.
So why is coffee used in this manner?
“The coffee grounds work to absorb odours and are fast-drying,” explains Helen Kang, a design director with American Eagle, the retailer who launched the coffee jeans.
“You can wear them until you feel the need to wash them [and] the coffee grounds have microscopic pores that reflect UV rays, thereby providing UV protection.”
Power
Earlier this year some of the UK’s biggest and busiest railway stations in London signed up to a project that will see coffee waste be used as a fuel source.
It was worked out that coffee shops in Euston, King’s Cross, Liverpool Street, Paddington, Victoria and Waterloo generated in the region of 700 tonnes of coffee waste every year.
Instead of sending the grounds off to the landfill, they are now being collected and sent to a factory run by a green energy company who will then turn the grinds into a carbon neutral biofuel.
Each tonne is expected to generate 5,700 kW hours of energy, which means that 1,000 homes could be powered for a year – just on leftover coffee grounds.
How much waste coffee does the world produce as a whole? The thick end of 10 million tonnes, according to reports.
Just imagine what we could do if all coffee grounds were turned into a power source?
But it doesn’t just have to be homes! Over the past few years, we’ve seen coffee powered cars and coffee powered buses, proof – if it were needed – that coffee is a universal fuel.
Cleaning
You can use coffee grounds around the house to help out with a number of domestic chores.
If you have a feature fireplace at home I know your pain. Cleaning them can be a bit of a troublesome task, not to mention a dirty and time-consuming one. However, once again, coffee can come to your rescue.
If you sprinkle some grounds over the ashes in your fireplace before cleaning, they’ll be easier to manoeuvre and shovel up than before. This is because the grounds add weight and a bit of moisture to the ash and dust, which helps keeps them at floor level. No more rogue and sullen clouds.
You can also create natural scouring pads using coffee grounds – a perfect tip for both domestic and commercial kitchens!
Haircare
Caffeine infused shampoo is on-trend at the moment.
But aside from purchasing marked up products at the supermarket, why not store your leftover grounds?
If you use a lot of stylings products or have recently switched to a natural shampoo, then your coffee grinds can cut through any lingering residue and leave you and your hair feeling a whole lot healthier after every wash.
Because of their coarseness, the grinds are strong enough to break apart any residue and other bits of dirt that are present. However, they’re also soft enough to be used safely without damaging your precious locks.
| Have you got any suggestions on what to do with your leftover coffee grinds? Perhaps there’s a use that you swear by that we’ve missed or maybe you’ve heard of it being used in a new and ingenious manner! Get in touch and let us know. |