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“In your miraculous mix of wise-cracks and suicidal people, I learned philosophy, dice, gambling and the cruel poetry of not thinking about myself anymore…”, say the verses of Buenos Aires Cafewhich Mariano Mores and Enrique Santos Discépolo composed in 1948. This tango condenses the importance of bars and cafeterias in the culture, belonging and idiosyncrasy of the inhabitants of the Argentine capital.
According to data from the General Directorate of Statistics and Censuses, there are just over 2,800 bars in the city. All of them with their essential coffee machines. All serving tens of thousands of wells every day. To prepare them, about seven grams of coffee are used, of which only one reaches the cup next to the water. The rest is waste: the waste that begins to accumulate in the bags of each establishment. Gastronomic waste accounts for half of all waste produced in the city. Each cafeteria discards an average of five kilos per day.
Camila Castro Grinstein, creator and director of Etimo Biomateriales, says that when she studied Textile Design, she began to think about new materials. “I was researching, working and training with biomaterials. I analyzed yerba mate, but it is consumed at home and it is difficult to get rid of the residue. I started to see what's around me. I have a lot of restaurants and cafes. This is how the idea of a cup made with coffee grounds arose. “We seek to reduce the use of disposable cups, which are neither biodegradable nor recyclable.”
The star product, which is already in some cafes in the city and will soon go on sale to the public, is called Borra, a cup composed of bio-based materials from starches and coffee grounds, without components derived from petroleum and 100% biodegradable.
“Some cafes provide us with the material, then we dry and store it. That is mixed with a formula (all biobased and biodegradable), which is transformed into pellets. Finally it goes to a machine that, with heat and pressure, fills the molds and transforms them into cups. We extend the life of that waste that came out of the cafeterias,” he adds about the project, which was awarded in the Santander X Award Entrepreneur Launch.
Currently, they work with 11 coffee shops in the city that take care of their raw materials and were interested in the project. Some also help to test the product and provide a feedback to improve it, since they use it intensively. “We have a production capacity of 4,000 cups per month. If you intend to do something sustainable, you need to recycle large amounts of waste to achieve a positive impact. The idea is to bring food back to the table. If one imagines a dystopian and fatalistic future, in which everything ends, the shell of something will always remain,” analyzes Castro Grinstein.
Although coffee grounds are a compostable material, in the vast majority of coffee shops in the city, when the day is over, the bags are closed and thrown into the trash can. This waste has its final destination in the city's large landfills. “You have to understand what good waste management is. Not everything organic ends up in the right place. If it ends up in a landfill, the waste generates pollution due to the gases it releases.” And he concludes: “There is no single solution. We must make a little compost, another of recyclables and another of recycling to produce less plastic waste. This is how we compare and take stock. We have to find a balance.”
Tableware with shells
The coffee cup venture is part of a small, large network in Argentina that seeks to reduce the consumption of single-use plastics from organic waste. Juliana Campanelli is one of the creators of Oda Biovajilla. The project was born in the Industrial Design program at the University of Buenos Aires, together with other colleagues concerned about the large amount of disposable items that were thrown away at fairs and massive events.
What started as a thesis ended up becoming a company that produces disposables (sauce bowls, bowls and plates) made from industry waste: coffee husks, potato peels and others on a semi-industrial scale. They are looking to expand the catalog to products such as cutlery and stirrers.
“At another time we work with the apple must and parsley sticks. We are open to linking up with any producer who has organic waste, which mostly ends up in the trash and not in compost. That way, we make sure they get to a good place. We do not use plastic, resin or anything that pollutes; The material goes through a compression and sealing process, as if it were a large waffle maker. Then it is dried with heat and pressure and, finally, a baking process to finish sealing,” says Campanelli.
The great challenge of your project and others of its type is to be competitive and reduce costs through constant alliance work. “If we achieve the investment we need to produce at scale, we can compete in cost with other imported disposables. We aim to produce 80,000 dishes per month,” she enthuses.
Campanelli focuses not only on undertakings of this type but also on promoting public policies beyond activism and the work of companies and organizations. “It is unfair that the pressure falls on people; The responsibility would have to come from above. It is difficult to carry out these projects without help from governments and laws. The individual always adds up, but most of the pollution comes from large companies,” he concluded.
Hierarchize the organic
“No one treats organic waste. That is a problem due to the emissions and externalities it generates. When it decomposes, it generates disease vectors. It is a big elephant that we are letting pass by without doing much. We must aim for a hierarchy of organic waste,” says Santiago Trejo, p
roject director of the Waste Bank Foundation, which has been working for five years with the treatment of household organic waste and large generators, such as businesses and restaurants.
He speaks of this hierarchy as a “pyramid”, which aims to make the greatest possible use of waste. “It makes no sense for you to compost a food that can be consumed. It can be used for animal consumption, composting and, finally, biodigestion. In Argentina there are few places where differentiated separation of organics is done,” said Trejo, who is also a member of the Argentine Zero Waste movement.
The cups made from coffee grounds and bio-dishes projects are two good examples of how to manage waste. “They are very interesting initiatives because they see materials not as garbage but as resources. The big problem is the costs, which end up being decisive. For this, it is necessary to work in alliances with the person who generates the waste, the one who collects it, the processing person and the end customer,” adds Trejo.
Camila Castro Grinstein, from Etimo Biomateriales, uses a circular image to explain the revaluation of the product. “The dregs become a cup. It is, in some way, a return of coffee for coffee. You can also think about the path from pomace to wine. Everything takes time to develop and much more in a country with a lot of uncertainty like Argentina. But how nice it would be to make that wheel.”
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