Every year we as coffee drinkers help produce 22 billion pounds of used coffee grounds. Most of that waste ends up in landfills releasing methane and other greenhouse gasses. I personally add the used ground to my garden and indoor plants but that only takes care of so much. The rest goes in the trash. Not the best option.
Scientists are working on killing two birds with one stone, cement. You see cement uses sand which has to be mined and it’s a finite resource. The type of sand they use is environmentally damaging as it’s not the same type of sand you find on the beach. And we are constantly looking for new sand deposits. All of this affects the environment.
What if we could take one problem and eliminate 2? You can’t add raw grounds to the concrete because organic compound break down and weakend the structure. But, by heating used coffee grounds using a process called pyrolysing they can turn the ground coffee into tiny bits of charcoal. This charcoal can be added to concrete mix and produces a finished product that is 30 percent stronger than regular concrete.
Now any time you come up with a new construction technique you can’t just compliment it right off the bat so they are testing the coffee concrete to see how it handles the elements, rain, wind, freezing and hot days. All to see how it performed. I can’t wait to see what this stuff can do.
So what are the uses for your used grounds that you have that we didn’t mention.