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| Coffee pulp separation from wastewater |
- Environmental Leader
UTZ Certified, a Dutch sustainable agriculture non-profit, has spent some time (4 years to be exact) working closely with Central American coffee producers and processors studying specifically the effects coffee wastewater has on local communities and ecosystems. The unfortunate truth about coffee processing is the spectrum of harmful consequences it generates.
Roughly 70% of the world's coffee is produced in Latin America and every cup of coffee consumed requires approximately forty gallons of water to process. Production methods yield thousands of gallons of untreated, toxic wastewater which gets released into natural waterways polluting the health and environments of plants, fish and downstream communities. Coffee production also releases "considerable amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, particularly methane" due to the presence of organic waste contained in coffee wastewater that in turn is affecting the soil. Seeing how these various habitats are put at risk, UTZ Certified set out on an ambitious project experimenting with a series of tests in nineteen pilot sites that focused on developing "custom-made coffee wastewater treatment systems and solid-waste treatment mechanisms."
Not only did their project turn out successful but the impact of their invention had considerable positive results! Listed below are some of the findings collected from UTZ's testing:
- Water reduction of over 50% in coffee processing
- Generation of significant amount of biogas which was used to power households and coffee mills
- Treatment of essentially all water used in coffee processing (disposing of 80-90% of water contamination)
- Prevention of local deforestation of native trees (along with 8-9 ton reduction of carbon emissions per community due to the shift away from firewood)
- Prevention of greenhouse gas emissions
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| Image credit: UTZ Certified |
Back in January we covered some developments that were underway for using spent coffee grounds in everyday commercial products such as bioplastics and laundry detergents. You can read about those research projects here!
Source material and references:
- Environmental Leader
- Sustainablog by Jeff McIntire-Strasburg
