As a coffee lover, you likely produce several pounds of coffee grounds, every year. Rather than simply disposing of these used grounds, there are many different crafts and uses that enable you to recycle your used coffee grounds. Here are a few of our favorites:
- Coffee is great for deodorizing. This is why perfume or cologne stores keep coffee beans in a small bowl to help you clear your nose before smelling a new scent. To deodorize your home or business, dry the used grounds on a cookie sheet or a piece of wax paper and then put them in a small bowl. Keep the bowl in your freezer or fridge to absorb any smells. This will help your butter and other dairy products that tend to take on tastes and smells to stay fresh. You can also rub the grounds on your hands after handling strong-smelling foods, like onions or garlic, to remove the odor.
- Ants and other insects don’t like coffee grounds, so sprinkle them around windows, doors and other areas where you don’t want ants, slugs, snails and other bugs entering your home. If you find that bugs are eating your plants, sprinkle them around the edges of the pod or on the leaves to keep bugs away.
- If you have plants in or around your home or business, you can use the grounds as fertilizer in the soil. Make sure you check if the plants you have prefer acidic soil before adding the grounds. If they do, they will thrive with the addition of the grounds. Several common plants that do better when given used coffee grounds are roses, rhododendrons, evergreens, camellias and azaleas.
So don’t throw those used grounds away, look around and see where you can put them to good use.
