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Coffee is a wide produced and consumed drinking all around the world.

After the use, exhausted coffee filters (wet coffee powder) are a very nutrient fertilizer. This brought some people to collect the exhausted coffee powder and to use it as fertilizer for domestic plants.

Does anyone know about any country, city, or village that implemented a coffee separate collection with the aim of collecting the exhausted coffee and bringing it to the nearest crop fields in order to use it as fertilizer?
Is implementing such a separate collection worth it?

Tms91
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    Do you mean in addition to food waste collections, or instead? Collecting and composting all food is surely better, and uses for uncomposted coffee grounds are fairly limie – Chris H Apr 05 '20 at 11:48
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    I doubt that you'll find separate waste streams for coffee grounds only. And the 'internet wisdom' of using it as fertilizer is probably more of a hype than wise advice. Googling for 'soil improvement coffee grounds' turned up several warnings such as this and this. –  Apr 05 '20 at 13:21
  • Thanks everybody for helping me bursting the myth. Jan's comment is the one I was looking for. Please Jan, type it as answer and I will flag it as correct. I voted both your comments – Tms91 Apr 05 '20 at 13:31

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I am not aware of any collection schemes on country or city level, but here in the Netherlands we have several companies that collect and reuse coffee grounds, mostly from cafés and restaurants. Some examples (no affiliation to any):

  • Rotterzwam sells mushrooms grown on spent coffee grounds to restaurants and people in the city of Rotterdam (only there to reduce transportation). People elsewhere can buy one of their grow-your-self kits so you can convert your own used coffee grounds into mushrooms.

  • Soop uses organic waste streams such as coffee ground and orange peels to manufacture soap bars

  • Ruik uses coffee grounds, orange peels and christmas trees as ingredients to make their parfumes

  • A Dutch start-up called You lucky bird turns spent coffee grounds into coffee cups. The cups can go into a dishwasher and after a few years of usage they are recycled into new cups.

THelper
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