Coffee is one of the most popular drinks in the country, but if we are brewing it at home, how can we reduce wastage?
If you make yours at home, you might use a cafetiere, Aeropress, coffee bean grinder, or even a bean grinder to get yours the way you want it.
But, more often than not, us coffee aficionados find ourselves with leftover coffee granules that we don’t know what to do with.
As more coffee companies are becoming more eco-conscious when it comes to packaging and their impact on the environment, it’s also worth considering how we can do our bit at home and help to reduce waste while still enjoying a nice cuppa.
We asked some local roasters about their top tips for what to do with leftover coffee grounds.
Gardening
Lynsey Harley, founder of Modern Standard Coffee
After moving her hugely-successful coffee business Modern Standard from London to Glenrothes, and recently opening a cafe in Edinburgh, Lynsey Harley knows a thing or two when it comes to roasting coffee.
Her top tips include using it in gardening and beauty products.
She said: “The two most common ways of reusing leftover coffee grounds are using it in the garden and as a body/face scrub. Adding spent coffee grounds to your garden helps to prevent slugs and promotes plant growth.
“The grounds are full of carbon and nitrogen, and we have lots of our wholesale customers using their old coffee bags to fill up with the spent grounds, and handing them out to green fingered customers.
“It can also be added to compost to enrich it. With the body/face scrub, this is best with a coarser grind as fine ground won’t give a good consistency as it turns more into a paste than a scrub.
“We also have lots of coffee sacks, so if anyone local to Glenrothes would like some hessian sacks for storing their potatoes, they are welcome to pop down and pick up a couple each.”
Cooking
Alex MacIntyre, Manifesto Coffee
Meanwhile, Alex MacIntyre from Perth’s Manifesto Coffee, which has just undergone a packaging rebrand to offer their product up in fully recyclable drinks cans, says that cooking is another way to use leftover coffee grounds.
He adds: “Spice rubs for meat is one way coffee grounds can be used and are great for slow cooked barbecue meat. Mix the grounds in with your favourite spices and rub it into your meat a couple of hours before cooking. The acids and enzymes within coffee will help tenderise the meat and help make it tastier.
“However, the most common way is to use them in the garden. Coffee grounds have a lot of great nutrients and minerals, such as nitrogen, calcium, potassium, iron, phosphorus (among others) which are great for plants.
“People have also used coffee grounds as an insect repellent – caffeine (and other compounds) found within coffee are natural insecticides. I’ve been told that leaving bowls of coffee grounds around will ward off bugs… but I haven’t tried this yet!”
Neutralise bad odours
Another way to use coffee grounds, according to Alex, is to combat bad smells, wherever they may be.
“Coffee grounds will neutralise bad odours – also a great reason to use it in your compost,” he continued.
“If you chuck it in your food waste bin it will smell less funky, and a bowl of leftover coffee grounds is also good in the fridge when you have things in there with strong smells.
“You might have also seen some soaps, shampoos or scrubs with coffee grounds in them as coffee is great for the skin and can promote hair growth for those with thinning hair.
“There are plenty of recipes online for these, but they’re pretty easy to do with mixtures including not much more than coconut butter or shea butter, honey, and, of course, coffee grounds.”