You have surely heard before that the future of food comes from rearing insects. Who would have thought that coffee would have a role to play there?
When roasting coffee, the bean is heated. The water inside it becomes carbonated, it expands, and the silverskin, the thin golden film that covers it comes off (a bit like a grain of popcorn!). Coffee silverskin is the only by-product produced during the coffee beans roasting process.
Until 2017, this organic waste was thrown in the trash. Representing between three and four pounds of peels per 450 lbs of green coffee, the huge bags were crammed into the containers. What if this production waste holds great potential for another company?
In 2018, Synergie Estrie put Café William and Entosystem in touch with its circular economy program.
Entosystem is a Sherbrooke-based company, in Quebec, that specializes in the production of insects for feeding livestock and pets. Its mission: to be able to provide animals with a source of protein that is both high quality and non-destructive for the environment.
Entosystem's process "consists of recycling organic materials that are not considered valuable from farm to grocery store then use them as sustenance for our larvae, who, very quickly, will accumulate them in their body as protein, fat and other nutrients." By reintroducing organic waste into this circular system, waste is avoided and the creation of new waste. The larvae are then dried to obtain a rich flour, ideal for **animal feed!**Initially, the goal was to offer our coffee silverskin as nutrient-rich food for their fly larvae. The analyzes are inconclusive, however giving up is out of the question! They came to the realization that coffee silverskin could be an integral part of the insect’s habitat, and that they can be used as structuring agents which control humidity and allow the substrate to obtain an ideal nitrogen / carbon ratio.
Thanks to this initiative, Entosysem was able to save more than $ 13,000 per year, while the production of the equivalent of 20,000 kg of CO2 was avoided, which is comparable to 170,000 km in the city in an SUV!
Did you know that we also collect another of our organic waste, the coffee burlap bags? Another great initiative that allows us to avoid tons of GHGs! Read article
