In Friuli, coffee grounds become fertilizer

Company Board of Directors of Cattelan Srl, known simply as CDA, Founded in 1976 to Talmassons (province of Udine) as a family business specializing in supply and management of vending machines for drinks and food.

As often happens in vending, vending machines produce large quantities of used coffee groundsFor CDA, these have never been simple waste to be disposed of, but an opportunity: through a research project with the University of Udine and the scientific spin-off Blucomb, the company analyzed the properties of these funds, with the consultancy of the Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences of the University of Udine, discovering that:

• Coffee grounds can be transformed into high calorific value pellets (with higher energy yield than wood pellets), useful as biomass for heating or other uses;
• organic residues can be composted or used as natural soil fertilizers, taking advantage of the nutrients still present;
• they can also be generated growing substrates (e.g. mushrooms) through controlled biological processes

The potential of the project is enormous, as an estimate reported by various sources indicates that in Italy approximately