Ground Coffee As The New Foundation For Roads

Coffee. Is there anything that this magical juice cannot do? In recent research developments conducted by Professor Arul Arulrajah from Swinburne University has discovered that used coffee grounds may be the new foundation for roads. Arulrajah and his colleagues collected soggy coffee grounds from the bins of a local café and dried them in a 50 °C oven. They mixed seven parts coffee grounds with three parts of a waste product from steel manufacturing called slag and added an alkaline solution to bind everything together. “On average the cafés we collect from dispose of about 150 kg of coffee grounds per week," says Professor Arulrajah. “We estimate that the coffee grounds from Melbourne’s cafés could be used to build five kilometres of road per year. This would reduce landfill and the demand for virgin quarry materials." Imagine what all the coffee grounds from Australia could achieve. In Australia, we love our coffee. Research conducted by McCrindle and Jura Australia discovered that three quarters of Australians have at least one cup a day. Three in four Australians (75%) enjoy at least one cup of coffee per day, and of those, 28% have three or more cups per day! Now that’s a lot of coffee going into landfill. Initiatives like this are integral to the future of the environment. Next time you are sipping a cup of java whilst driving to work, remember you may be driving on your last coffee! https://www.newscientist.com/article/2086510-recycled-coffee-grounds-could-make-roads-smoother-and-greener/ http://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/latest-news/2016/05/coffee-more-than-a-just-drink-for-swinburne-engineers.php http://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/latest-news/2016/05/coffee-more-than-a-just-drink-for-swinburne-engineers.php https://mccrindle.com.au/insights/blogarchive/australian-attitudes-towards-coffee/