This isn’t a rubbish conversation about which city turns out Australia’s best brews. We’re wanting to share some news on the Victoria front. And to float a huge topic – a 75,000 tonne topic - about Australia’s annual coffee ground waste.
All Café We Supply in Victoria Are Now Part of The Circular Economy.
We’ve proudly partnered with Reground, Melbourne’s leading circular waste social enterprise, creating a unique ‘roaster-led’ model to ensure the entire coffee grounds waste stream from Victoria cafes we supply goes into compost, not landfill.
Melbourne cafes rocking grounds-to-compost collection include Morning Market, Mr Ashcroft, Three Blue Ducks, Occident, WoodsYard, Tokyo Lamington, Lennox, Est 1983 and Arthur St Deli.
Their grounds - 8200 kilos of them to date – have been enriching community and home gardens throughout Victoria, as well as being used in Melbourne Zoo.
Coffee’s nutrients, put to good use. And that’s just the half of it.
Why Grounds In Landfill Needs To Be A Hot Topic.
Around five years ago, we learnt that spent grounds off-gas methane, a greenhouse gas that’s approximately 30 times as harmful as carbon dioxide. Frustratingly, almost all of Australia’s 75, 000 tonnes are in landfill, producing a staggering amount of methane each year.
While we search for solutions to support our whole café base with diverting coffee ground waste from landfill, there are a few things we’re doing.
As well as using compost services for our Surry Hills cafe waste for years, we took an extra stand last year and offset a whopping 4, 820,000 coffee shots worth of methane on behalf of cafes we supply, planting extensively with Greenfleet Australia.
And now, we’re excited by the prospect of supporting Reground and their innovative waste collection and waste minimisation projects. As Chris Handel, Trader House Group General Manager says when referring to Reground’s Impact Report “These numbers are so encouraging. It's extremely important to us that our suppliers continue to innovate and deliver environmental initiatives. We know from our own journey that making an impact through change is best when efforts are combined and this is a perfect example of how through great partnerships we can achieve so much more.”
