Every year, coffee drinkers worldwide generate about 6 million tons of used coffee grounds.
A Belgian company named PermaFungi is finding a way to give coffee grounds a second life, using them to grow mushrooms. PermaFungi recycled 39 of those tons, in 2018.
PermaFungi harvests around 2,000 pounds of mushrooms a month from used coffee grounds.
According to the company, this project supports a circular economy, a system designed to reduce waste.
Instead of letting coffee grounds wind up in landfills, the PermaFungi company heads out by bike to pick up as much as 100 kilograms of grounds from local coffee shops in Brussels.
The grounds are brought back to the growing facility, where they’re packed into bags with straw to make a nutritious soil for the mushroom spores.
A mushroom can break down coffee grounds. It doesn’t see coffee, it doesn’t see coffee grounds — it sees nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon. And it’s going to use that base to get only what it needs.
Julian Jacquet, cofounder of PermaFungi
After around two weeks in a dark, damp room, the bags are brought to a brighter space, where the mushrooms start to grow. Once they’re harvested, the team delivers the mushrooms to restaurants and organic stores.
It’s a circular method in which byproducts are reused rather than wasted.
For PermaFungi, it’s all about restoring natural cycles.
