From waste to resource: Coffee grounds to freshly grown oyster mushrooms ☕️
Our software collects data about what resources are available for reuse, recycling, or repurposing. In this series of articles, we explore the journeys of resources we help back to the cycle.
Coffee grounds are a mushroom’s best friend
Did you know that Norwegians drink 13 million cups of coffee every day*? And where coffee is drunk, huge amounts of coffee grounds are produced. And wasted.
Coffee grounds provide the perfect substrate for growing oyster mushrooms. The substrate is the material the mushroom grows in, and the reason is that the mycelium, the vegetative part of the mushroom that consists of a mass of branching, is able to feed off the nutritious coffee grounds.
From waste to resource
Hella Sopperi, a local producer of oyster mushrooms in Bergen, needs large amounts of fresh coffee grounds for its production. Since the coffee grounds used for growing need to be fresh and because it all too often ends up as waste in the bin, the producer is reliant on a solid overview of available grounds. They are also dependent on creating awareness with the employees in shops that produce a lot of coffee grounds.
In a month, around 310 kilos of coffee grounds are produced at Vestkanten Storsenter. Together with Carrot, Hella has started a pilot project collecting all the grounds from producers of the valuable resource at Vestkanten Storsenter.
*According to Norsk Kaffeinformasjon
Psst! Did you know that coffee grounds can also be used to create clothes and other materials such as soap?