If you love coffee as much as we do, you end up with a lot of used coffee grounds. About 70% of roasted coffee isn’t water soluble, so the leftover waste can add up quickly if you have a morning press and afternoon pour-over habit! There are plenty of earth-friendly uses for those grounds, once they’ve given us a delicious brew.
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Compost them
Coffee grounds and paper filters make great “green” compost, which means they are nitrogen-rich. You’ll want to balance out the “green” compost with 4x as much of “brown” compost like newspaper or dried leaves to prevent the compost from creating unwanted odors.
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Use them as fertilizer
You can spread a thin layer of coffee grounds directly on your garden. Coffee grounds have a pretty neutral pH, so you don’t have to worry about it being too acidic. You can also create a “cold brew fertilizer” by adding a cup of grounds to a 2 gallon bucket of water. Let it extract overnight and use it for your garden or potted plants.
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Grow mushrooms!
This is a more advanced use of your gardening skills, for sure. If you’re using coffee grounds for growing medium, we recommend microwaving the grounds to prevent any unwanted mold developing. When you combine the coffee grounds with straw or sawdust, it creates the ideal growing medium for your own oyster or shitake mushrooms!
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Make a refreshing skincare treatment
Reuse your coffee grounds and look refreshed on your next Zoom meeting marathon! A DIY coffee mask takes advantage of the antioxidants and caffeine left over after you brew a cup. You can also make a great exfoliating scrub by adding coconut oil and coarse sugar to your leftover grinds. For a spa experience at home, add a drop of essential oil.
