Coffee Grounds for Growth
Starting Spring 2012, Sodexo can recover used coffee grounds on all sites and donate them to customers as a natural fertiliser for their gardens. This helps reduce environmental footprint and brings invaluable social benefits.
Reducing our environmental footprint
By recovering used coffee grounds, we have the opportunity to divert more than 200 tonnes of coffee grounds from landfill every year, realising £28,000 potential savings in waste disposal and reduce CO2 equivalent emissions by 100 tonnes per year.
We re-use the original coffee bags that coffee beans come in to package used coffee grounds - a way to give those bags a valuable second life and avoid creating a new waste stream. The labels we use to seal the bags and their backing paper are from FSC-certified sources and are recyclable.
Maximising social benefits
The attractive wooden boxes designed to display bags of used coffee grounds are produced by the carpentry workshop at HMP Peterborough, a prison managed by Sodexo Justice Services. This initiative supports the on-going programme to reduce re-offending.
We hope that customers picking up a bag of coffee grounds will gladly make a small donation to the Sodexo Foundation STOP Hunger campaign. The Sodexo Foundation (regd. 11102660) supports charities that provide food to those in need, promote health and nutrition or deliver basic life skills training such as cooking.
Natural fertiliser for happy plants
Coffee grounds are rich with minerals and vitamins, containing nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and a desirable, slightly acidic pH level between 3.0 and 5.0, which can suit some plants.
Many ways to use coffee grounds for a healthy garden:
Fertiliser: Before watering your outdoor plants, layer your soil or target garden areas with coffee grounds. You can also sprinkle the grounds directly on the soil of potted houseplants
Liquid fertiliser: Mix 250g of coffee grounds into a 25 l water container for a perfect liquid fertiliser
Pest deterrent: Surround plants sensitive to pests, especially worms, with a mixture of coffee grounds and eggshells. This keeps worms well fed and happy without having to resort to chemical pesticides.
Bio-compost: Mix coffee grounds (25%) to your compost bin (75%) to neutralize pH levels and quicken the decomposting process. Add a teaspoon of lime or wood for each 2kg of grounds to balance out acidity levels.
Compost for vegetables: Spread your used coffee grounds in a thin layer on a paper towel and set them in a sunny spot. Let the grounds dry for two hours and sprinkle them directly on top of the soil around the base of your vegetables. You don't need to turn them into the soil.
Plants that react really well to the acid effect of coffee grounds:
Asparagus, azaleas, beans, blueberries, cabbage, corn, cranberries, ferns, gardenias, lettuce, melons, oaks, okra, onions, peas, peppers, potatoes, rhododendrons, roses, spinach, spruces, squash, sugar beets.
If you have doubts about the effect of coffee grounds on some plants however, please consult a gardener.
For more information, please contact corporate.citizenship@sodexo.com.
