This Handy Device Turns Plastic Coffee Pod K-Cups Into A Valuable Resource For Your Garden!

Hello and welcome back my friends. So every day millions of people around the entire globe start their day off with an enjoyable cup of coffee. So good especially on a cool crisp morning. But over time what's become so important is convenience in our busy life schedules and because of that many folks have turned to using little coffee pods or k-cups to brew their cup of coffee each day. I'm one of them. Now there's a common concern with this type of coffee brewing technique that folks out there have. I gotta say I share in this concern and that is the accumulation of plastic and waste that is created by using this type of method. However if you've been following along the channel here on Plant Abundance then you're probably aware that I do care about the earth and I try to do my part by growing my own food and creating an abundant yard out of what was once just a space of grass and weeds which reduces my overall impact on the environment. So I can feel good about that but regardless of whether you garden or you just enjoy your coffee every day and like the convenience of a k-cup I've got a solution for you well worth looking into. Come check this out. So this little convenient tool here is known as Recycle A Cup and I've been using this for years to easily break down my coffee pods so that I can recycle all the different material. So here's how we do it around here. Every day after brewing our cups of coffee what we do is we throw that used coffee pod into this container here and then once it becomes full we can then spend a few moments processing down the coffee pods and removing the coffee which has a second use for all you gardeners out there. Whether you do outdoor gardening or you have house plants there is a benefit to using coffee grounds that I'm going to share with you now. But first let me show you up close just how easy it is to use this tool. So as we flip it around you'll see these two buttons that protrude on the side. When we engage those it pops out a couple little sharp razors. That's what's going to poke through the coffee pod just the perfect amount allowing us to remove the top and therefore the contents inside. Check it out. You just take your coffee pod and you place the Recycle A Cup on top making sure that it's flat. As you do this I do recommend that you hold at the very base of the coffee pod where it's got the most rigidity. If you grip higher up on the coffee pod while you're doing this it can contort the overall shape of the object making it harder to make a clean cut. So we're now just going to do a full turn here and you'll hear that pop sound at which point you remove the entire contents of the coffee pod. Now the cup portion of this coffee pod is completely plastic easily recyclable and it also has in it a plastic disc which is recyclable. So we're going to set that aside and now focus on the top portion. So here's the second step. We've got the top still connected to the coffee filter with the spent coffee grounds inside and this plastic ring that makes up the lid also has some aluminum foil on the top that we want to separate. So after having done this hundreds of times I'm going to share with you the easiest most efficient method I've found for processing this last portion here. So what I do is I grasp that filter and I tear it off and also tap the top of the lid. Now at this point I usually set these aside and allow these to build up over time so that I can process them all at once rather than individually. Now it is important that we separate the aluminum from the plastic to make it easily recyclable but I'm going to put this out there even though it'll probably offend some folks and that is this. If you were previously just tossing these out in the garbage because they weren't recyclable with the coffee inside if you just made this first step removing the lid and taking the majority of the plastic here for recycling and this was all you tossed well you'd be reducing your waste by about 75 to 80 which is great. But I highly recommend you go the full route here and like I said set these aside you can build up hundreds of these in a small ziploc bag and come back to them at a later time. Maybe it's a rainy day you're watching a movie and just continually clean these up and feel really good about yourself for what you've done. So the way to clean the top is to simply poke through the aluminum foil and go around the edge where the glue is at and just pull it away. Now you have a piece of aluminum foil that you can combine with the other pieces for recycling and you've got your ring here. You can also quickly go around and remove any of the added filter that's on here. At this point this entire pod now has become recyclable and as a side note here I just want to mention these coffee filters are also completely compostable and can be added into your garden or your worm bin for that matter. So these get put out into the landscape to help build soil tilth and create fertilizer for the garden as well. And by the way I do recommend always using organic coffee if possible. The coffee plant is one of the most heavily sprayed with chemicals out of all plants that are grown. So not only is it going to be healthier for you to consume organic coffee but it's going to be better for your landscape or your worm bin for that matter. But if conventional is the best you can do right now I understand. So don't let it prevent you from going through this process of removing the plastic for recycling and harvesting this precious resource known as spent coffee grounds which have many different uses in the garden that we're going to talk about right now. Also my friends perhaps you don't drink coffee but you know someone who does or you see an abundance of these coffee pods building up at the office. Well I'd recommend that you collect those if they're just getting thrown away. So spent coffee grounds are actually neutral on the pH scale. A lot of folks are under the impression that they're acidic which they are prior to being ran through a machine. But the acid portion of the ground coffee bean is water soluble and ends up in your cup of coffee. So once the coffee grounds have been flushed with water they are now neutral. That being said you could definitely add these to acidic loving plants like blueberries but don't fret you can add this around any of your plants. Now some of the benefits to doing it like this and as you can see I'm throwing the filter in there as well they're just going to break down just like cardboard or any other paper product would in the soil. But some of the major benefits in the garden is that these coffee grounds can actually help to repel ants slugs and snails and they'll also help to bring in beneficial worms because the worms love this gritty material and eat it up. And over time what's going to happen as this material breaks down it's going to contribute to the organic profile of your soil helping to build soil tilt. Another use especially for farmers let's say you've got a an area in your yard that has some smells developing due to animals and such well you can sprinkle the coffee grounds around that area as a way to mitigate some of those smells. Now one of my absolute favorite ways of using spent coffee grounds is to simply add them into my worm bin. It's another level of processing like I mentioned the worms absolutely love coffee grounds when put in balance in a bin they add a grittiness that helps with the worm's digestive system and as a result we end up with what's known as gardener's black gold aka worm castings which every gardener should be taking part in creating free worm castings for their garden their potted plants. So let's see what we have going on in here oh yeah lots of activity hungry worms in here breaking down all these various kitchen scraps and I'm just going to add in some coffee grounds along with the filters they're going to process and break this stuff down and again perhaps you got a little bit of smell coming from your worm bin you shouldn't if you've got a well-balanced bin with greens to browns and not too much moisture then you shouldn't have any anaerobic activity which would create those smells but just in case you can add some coffee grounds in to help mitigate any of those smells. Now spent coffee grounds all on their own have a little bit of nitrogen another plant fertilizer so if you just want to feed it to your plants just for that nitrogen or even your potted plants indoors by all means do that I'd recommend not putting more than maybe a one to ten part ratio so over time just add a little bit here and there. Well that's going to do it for today's video I sure hope you found it helpful or at least entertaining in some way if so do us a favor and smash the like button if you haven't already consider subscribing to the channel new uploads every week sometimes every day and I'm always giving you updates on all the different things growing on around here so with that have yourself a great rest of the day have a wonderful weekend until next time this is Dan from plantabundance.com take care I'll be talking to you again soon.