Recycling Coffee Grinds & Filters

Yahoo! Green recently ran a nice blog article about how to recycle your coffee grinds for better health, to help the environment, and "green your caffeine." Some of these might already be known to you, but some may not. Definitely worth the read.

Here are a few things not covered in the Yahoo! article that your coffee grinds and filters can also be used for:

Coffee Grinds:
Note that coffee stains badly, so don't use it on anything that won't rinse out or that you don't mind staining. So if you have a white dog, you probably won't want to use coffee on him as a flea repellant or as a way to wash out skunk spray.

Yep, you read right. Coffee is one of the few proven methods to wash out the stink of a skunk when your dog (or child) gets into one. Get a tub, fill with water, and put the stinky animal/child into it. Then rub thoroughly with coffee grounds, rinsing and repeating as necessary. Dump the water out on your garden, shrubs, trees, or anywhere else it's of use.

In fact, coffee grounds are great deodorizers for many things and applications. A thin layer of grounds on your compost heap can dampen many of the odors therein. Same with many others. Understand, though, that too much coffee in your compost or manure will kill many of the beneficial bacteria, so be prudent.

Filters:
The filters are 100% recyclable/biodegradable as almost all are untreated paper fiber. Take the used filter (sans most grinds) and rinse it out over your compose heap. Then throw the filter in.

Rinse and reuse the tougher filters as liners for "plant starter" DIY plugs. Just put them into the starter plug tray, fill with potting mix, and ad seeds! The filter can be pulled out when the shoots are ready for planting and either planted directly (biodegradable) or easily peeled off. I usually peel them off and throw them into the compose heap.

So put that old coffee to good use!