Used Coffee Grounds Can Be Used For Food Packaging, OSU Says

Researchers at Oregon State University said they’ve created a way to turn a common food byproduct into useful food packaging.  OSU’s findings were just published in the Journal of Food Science, showing used coffee grounds can be converted into a flexible material that could eventually replace plastic wrap.  Assistant Professor Jooyeoun Jung leads the team and says the work aligns with previous efforts using waste from apples and grapes.

“Eco-friendly packaging, we had biodegradable packaging, edible packaging, using all that waste.”

Jung said they remove everything that makes coffee… coffee, so all that remains is the usable cellulose.

“We extract the coffee from the coffee beans, but the coffee beans itself is a good source of cellulose materials that can be used for the packaging."

Of course, they had plenty of grounds to experiment with, from OSU’s cafeteria.  Jung says the goal now is to create a scalable process that could be used for commercial application.

Click Here to read that entire Journal of Food Science article.

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