Funghi Espresso, a model company that uses coffee machine waste to produce excellent mushrooms. Use them in the kitchen, with many recipes (photos).

ESPRESSO MUSHROOMS

Less waste, less waste; more recycling, more economic opportunities: this is the philosophy of the circular economy. A model that even applies to the recovery of coffee grounds of the machines in bars, where Italians consume, on average, 80 million espressos a day. A huge figure, and also a great opportunity, if, as in the case of the company Mushrooms express, from these residues, which generally create disposal problems, it is possible to obtain excellent mushrooms.

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STARTUP FUNGHI ESPRESSO

It all starts in the municipality of Capannori, in the province of Lucca, an outpost of great avant-garde research and policies in «zero waste». From here Antonio di Giovanni, a 33-year-old graduate in Environmental Management of Rural Territory at the School of Agriculture of Florence, and Vincenzo Sangiovanni decided to found the startup Funghi Espresso with the aim of reuse all coffee grounds rejected by bars and restaurants to produce healthy and nutritious food, especially Pleurotus mushrooms, using fewer resources and polluting less.

TO KNOW MORE: What to know about mushrooms: a guide with lots of useful information and tasty recipes.

PLEUROTOS MUSHROOMS

The choice of mushroom production has mainly fallen on the Pleurotus mushrooms, the second best-known and most commercialized mushroom among cultivated mushrooms after mushrooms, which lends itself well to different uses thanks to its characteristics (fleshy, fragrant, nutritional) and is the type most suited to growing better and with less contamination on this coffee substrate being a saprophytic species.

ESPRESSO MUSHROOM KIT

There is the possibility to purchase directly online kits prepared by Funghi Espresso with a price ranging between 10 and 15 euros, in which there is a ready-made substrate with the aim of allowing anyone who wants to produce mushrooms at home.

The project is competing for the 2018 edition of the Non Sprecare Award. To learn more about the competition and participate, go to here!

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