This person is turning coffee grounds into delicious mushrooms
From waste to taste
Today’s eco snapshot👇🏽
Sustainable farming: Mushrooms from coffee waste
Startup of the week: The Udder Way
5 brands that sustainably stand out
Some good news from around the world
3 ways I can help you on your sustainability journey
🍄 How mushrooms grown from coffee waste are changing the game
Nam Mushroom is an urban farming project founded in 2018 by Natan Jacquemin, which cultivates edible fungus using coffee waste as an ideal breeding environment.
It receives 100 kilograms of coffee waste daily from Delta Cafés, Portugal's largest coffee distributor.
The mushrooms are sold to partner restaurants within 15 kilometers of Natan's farm.
Natan aims to become a social entrepreneur and an urban farmer, positively impacting the environment and society while earning an income.
To close the circle, Natan recycles the mushroom by-products and offers them to the Municipality of Lisbon, which uses them as fertilizer for gardens inside the city.
Nam Mushroom is also committed to hiring differently-abled people to help them integrate better into society.
Natan plans to expand his company over the next year and replicate the business model in other cities in Lisbon and abroad.
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✨ Startup of the week
Moo-ving away…A few years ago, Ed Crick owned a couple of cafes that heavily relied on milk as a primary ingredient. They received their milk supply in 2-liter bottles and were using around 30,000 bottles per year. Unfortunately, all of the bottles were thrown away after use, with only some of them being recycled. The majority of them ended up in landfills or oceans.
Reusable milk kegs…Frustrated by the amount of waste, Ed decided to take action. That's how The Udder Way was born in 2021. The company has built returnable and reusable kegs that can hold 18 liters of milk.
They hold the same amount of milk as a traditional milk crate holds in nine two-liter bottles.
A dispenser can be connected to the kegged milk and baristas can access it through a tap, just like pouring a beer.
Even grocers can install a keg system for customers to come in with their own refillable milk bottles.
Milking the benefits…A keg lasts for at least 800 washes or eight years and can save approximately 7-10k milk bottles per year in a cafe. By the end of 2023, the goal is to save 5 million bottles.
✅ Brands that sustainably stand out
🇨🇦 Flashfood- This app helps you save money while fighting food waste
🇳🇱 Iron Roots- Plastic-free sportswear brand
🇮🇳 Ashaya | WITHOUT™- Making sunglasses from packets of chips that cannot be recycled
🏴 ENOUGH- Creating a sustainable protein to feed the world
🇺🇸 Tangible- Bringing down the emissions of the real estate sector
Get access to 100+ sustainable brands like these for $50/year by becoming a paid subscriber. Not sure if you should commit? Well, it comes with a free 7-day trial
😹 Some Good News
Oil be darned- Ecuadorians vote to halt oil drilling in biodiverse Amazonian national park
Blowin in the wind- Wind-powered shipping is back as a quiet revolution sweeps the seas
Law and flaw- Growing number of countries consider making ecocide a crime
🌎 3 ways I can help you
If you would like to chat about anything related to sustainability and climate change, you can book a free 20-minute call
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If you’re a planet-friendly brand, I can help you with your blogs, newsletters, case studies, and whitepapers. Here’s some of my recent work
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Have a great weekend and see you next week😊
Coffee grounds are so useful. For two years I took around 10 kg per week and put them onto my garden and it transformed it.