Trafford Centre’s Compost Café helps reduce waste from its coffee shops

The UK sends over half a million tonnes of ground coffee to landfill each year. That’s a lot of coffee, that we could instead turn into food for plants. That’s right, coffee compost.

In a bid to help reduce their coffee waste and put their used beans to good use, intu Trafford Centre – and all of its coffee shops – are now turning it into compost as part of the new campaign.

They’re giving away compost bags to any green-thumbed customers who fancy treating their gardens to a caffeine-infused spruce this summer. And with the sunny weather this week, we couldn’t think of a better time to start.

Launching the initiative to improve the shopping centre’s sustainability, thousands of cups of coffee are sold each week from their various cafés and outlets.

Shops currently involved with the new initiative who happily handover their coffee waste includes Costa, Starbucks, EAT, Caffé Nero, LEON and Krispy Kreme.

Creating coffee compost is a really effective and efficient way to reduce waste, while also offering a great source of nutrition with coffee providing a brilliant source of nitrogen, which will help aid your plants growth.

It couldn’t be any simpler to use. All you have to do is work the coffee compost into your garden soil – and watch your plants and flowers grow to new heights before your very eyes!

Get your hands on a free bag from lower Peel Avenue, outside Marks and Spencers every Friday from 2pm – and get your garden prepped for the summer months ahead.

In a similar initiative to help prevent unnecessary coffee waste, I Love MCR have launched #PlasticFreeFriday – with several independent coffee shops from around Manchester signing up.

Today, coffee shops across the city centre will refuse to sell coffee in single-use cups to increase awareness of reusable plastics.

The future of sustainability is happening right now, here in Manchester.