Recycling Coffee Grounds, a Cradle to Cradle System

Did you know that coffee grounds could be used in your compost?

Coffee grounds are an excellent garden helper, they can be directly applied on the
ground or used in compost.The grounds contain useful amounts of phosphorus,
potassium, minor amounts of calcium, magnesium, copper and other trace minerals,
carbohydrates and some sugars which makes them ideal for helping grow plants such as basil and other herbs.

Current situation: The coffee shops don't know what to do with their grounds and throw them away while the gardeners always have a need for good compost material.

The solution :
Coffee cycle : Creating a community system where everyone exchanges something useful for an other.
Once a week the coffee shops give their coffee grounds to the gardener who in return can give one of his harvested plants.
We created several product, instructables who will be needed to make the coffee cycle work.

How it works : 
- The gardener uses a modified bicycle to collect coffee grounds and distribute his or her herbs.
Instructable: Modified bicycle: bicycle panniers
Instructable: Modified bicycle: bicycle burlap sacks

- With the modified bicycle the gardener bikes from one restaurant to another.
  The restaurant will keep the coffee grounds in a container.
Instructable: Coffee container for restaurants and cafes


- The gardener returns to his / her (urban) garden to deposit the grounds in the compost or directly on the plants.

- The gardener harvests the plants by using the compost.

- The gardener creates a flowerpot made out of some of the recieved coffee grounds.
Instructable: Biodegradable flower pot out of coffee grounds

- The gardener fills the selfmade flowerpot with a harvested herb (by using the compost with the coffee ground).
This herb will then be returned to a restaurant or cafe. The restaurant or cafe can use the herbs in their meals, drinks (mint,basil).
Once the flower pot is empty, herb totally used. The owner can give the flowerpot to the collector who can pour it in the compost with the new collected coffee grounds.
This is the full cycle that can be repeated every week.