How to recycle coffee grounds in an eco-friendly way?

Author included in categories Ecology Coffee

2019-01-08 2025-10-22 398 words 2 minutes

Discover how to give your coffee grounds a second life with simple and effective eco-friendly tips. Whether it's to unclog your pipes or neutralize odors in your refrigerator, these tips will help you optimize your coffee consumption while respecting the environment. Stop throwing away your coffee grounds, learn to recycle them cleverly and keep your home fresh and pleasant.

Contents

Don’t throw away your coffee grounds anymore!
Transform them into an ecological ally in your daily life with simple, economical and environmentally friendly tips. Whether to maintain your drains, neutralize odors or feed your plants, discover how to optimize every cup of coffee by reusing its grounds.

As a good coffee consumer, you can quickly produce a large quantity of grounds. Rather than throwing them away, learn to reuse them intelligently. After investigation, here are the best tips to recycle coffee grounds and reduce your environmental impact.

Warning

If you use a capsule machine, ecological reuse is more complicated, unless you opt for reusable capsules.

Using coffee grounds at home

Maintaining pipes with coffee grounds

When cleaning the coffee filter, pour the grounds into the sink.
As it flows through the pipes, it removes accumulated grease and eliminates bad odors.

Coffee grounds poured into drains — Coffee grounds help clean and deodorize drains.

Removing bad odors from the fridge

Place a small bowl of coffee grounds in your refrigerator.
Its absorbent power neutralizes unpleasant odors.
Note: this tip is complementary to regular cleaning of the fridge.

Coffee grounds in the fridge — Coffee grounds absorb bad odors from the fridge.

Degreasing a pan

Mix a little dish soap with coffee grounds, spread the paste on the bottom of the pan and let it sit for a few minutes. Rinse then scrub gently to avoid damaging the Teflon.

Coffee grounds used to degrease a pan — Coffee grounds act as a gentle abrasive to degrease.

Alternative tip: use dry grounds for better grease absorption (source).

Using coffee grounds in the garden

Organic fertilizer and pest protection

Sprinkle moist grounds at the base of your plants.
It acts as a natural fertilizer and repels slugs, snails and sometimes aphids (when sprayed diluted).

Coffee grounds to protect plants — Coffee grounds nourish plants and repel certain pests.

Activate compost

Add coffee grounds to your compost to stimulate biological activity and speed up its decomposition.

Warning

Avoid adding too much, its acidity could slow down the process.

Coffee grounds mixed with compost — Coffee grounds enrich compost, but in moderate quantities.

Other garden uses

Growing medium for seedlings or mushrooms (such as oyster mushrooms)
Makes hydrangeas bluer thanks to its acidity
Attracts earthworms, excellent for aerating the soil

Using coffee grounds for body care

Coffee grounds are a natural exfoliant ideal for the skin.
Many recipes exist, such as homemade scrubs, masks or hair care treatments (complete list here).

Beauty recipe with coffee grounds — Coffee grounds are a key ingredient in natural cosmetics.

To go further

Find more advice on ecology and coffee in this section.