By Fiona Cullen and Sophie Greenberg
As we embrace Earth Month, we’re reminded of the importance of reducing our environmental footprint and improving sustainability! At Java Love, we’re passionate about delivering exceptional coffee AND promoting environmentally friendly practices to protect our planet. That’s why we’re excited to share a simple yet impactful way to contribute to a greener world: reuse your leftover coffee grounds!
After every cup of coffee you brew, you’re left with a valuable resource, what should you do? Don’t let them go to waste! By reusing those grounds, you’re diverting waste from landfills, which lessens methane emissions, decreases overall pollution, and helps conserve resources. Keep reading to discover creatives and approachable ways to give your coffee grounds a second life and take care of our Earth:
Because of their abrasive texture, coffee grounds can be used as a natural cleaning scrub. They work especially well to sanitize and remove buildup on hard-to-clean surfaces, sinks, and grills, and they can even polish your cookware. Coffee grounds’ antibacterial and antiviral properties serve as a perfect chemical-free, all natural cleaning scrub; just be sure not to use them on porous materials to avoid stains!
Coffee grounds are an amazing natural fertilizer for gardens, all because of their abundance of essential nutrients such as nitrogen, calcium, potassium, iron, phosphorus, magnesium, and chromium. These vital minerals replenish the soil, supporting optimal plant growth. All you have to do is scatter your grounds around the base of your garden or potted plants!
Coffee grounds have odor-absorbing powers to help banish any unwanted smells in your home or kitchen. Placing bowls of leftover coffee grounds in your fridge or freezer can help in fighting spoiled or fragrant food odors. You can also create DIY air fresheners by filling old socks with coffee grounds and placing them in your clothes drawers, car, shoes, gym bag, and anywhere else you may see fit. They can also work as a scrub on your hands to fight off any odors from cooking with ingredients like onions or garlic. Their odor-fighting powers are incredible!
COMPOSTING
While coffee grounds have tons of practical uses around the house, we at Java Love choose to compost our coffee grounds.
In simple terms, composting is the natural process where organic materials, such as food scraps, yard waste, and other biodegradable materials (coffee grounds!), transform into a nutrient-rich soil called compost. Compost does wonders for gardens and landscapes, improving soil quality, providing nutrients to plants, and helping retain moisture in soil.
The best part? Composting can easily be done at home! Here are a few simple tips to start your own composting journey:
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Start with your container and collect your coffee grounds, paper filters, fruit and veggie scraps, egg shells, paper tea bags, and any other natural products. Avoid including meat, dairy, bones and greasy foods in your compost.
If you don’t have a backyard to compost yourself, we've got the perfect solution for you. Java Love proudly teams up with Java's Compost, a pickup service simplifying the composting of your leftover coffee grounds. Their composting services aid in ecosystem restoration, erosion prevention, and methane reduction by diverting waste from landfills. And it's not just coffee they handle – they compost all excess food, including meat and dairy! They even offer a drop-off program (linked here!) for you to easily dispose of compostable waste on the move.
Not in Java’s Compost’s service area? Luckily, there are tons of compost drop-off sites or pick-up options all over. Many farmers markets also offer compost collection sites and more and more towns are running municipality-run composting and green waste programs.
Happy composting!
