CoffeeB Compost

For several weeks I have been using CoffeeB capsules to prepare coffee in an environmentally more friendly manner. In the process I used an old ice cream box made from cardboard to store the punctured balls of seaweed coffee.

It doesn’t smell at all, so you can keep it in your kitchen without hesitation. As the capsules decompose they dry up and the surface becames like paper or a wasp’s nest. It feels light and fragile. It’s amusing because you have two piles.

In one corner you have the two plastic bin containers, filled with nespresso capsules made of aluminium and used coffee. These need to be cleaned so that the aluminium can be recycled and so that the coffee grounds can be composted or re-used in another manner.

Meanwhile, in a second pile you have twigs, branches, grass and more garden rubbish. That’s where you throw the coffeeB remnants. By the time I took the capsules to be recycled they had already started to decompose and degrade, ready for nature to reuse them. In theory I could chuck them out of a window, into a garden. I don’t do this because I don’t have permission to do so.

I would do the same with the coffee I grind and prepare from scratch but first I would need to find an appropriate container for used coffee. Thanks to their seaweed skin coffeeB coffee remnants are easier to dispose of than loose grounds.

## And Finally

I don’t know whether agriculture that [CoffeeB compost](https://www.coffeeb.com/en-ch/sustainability/composting-fertilize) has been added to still counts as bio, or whether it loses that certification. I know that it’s meant to degrade within 90 days, and that it degraded without smelling, in my apartment. I can see that the seaweed shells degrade fast, and that coffee grounds are left behind, which in turn degrade and return to nature. From what I have witnessed with my own eyes, the capsules keep to their word of being good for the environment.