It’s summer, and the only concrete I want right now is a delicious frozen custard. Certainly not the gray kind that sits on top of the heat, making any time spent outside somehow even more unbearable. However, the news cycle hates such seasonality. So today we’re taking a look at The world’s first coffee concrete path.
We first reported on coffee concrete in August last year, when scientists at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) created a up-to-date form of concrete made partly from coffee grounds. They found that the product was more environmentally genial than established concrete — turning what would normally be waste into a building material — but was also stronger, by about 30%. Now, those same scientists are putting coffee concrete to work by creating a up-to-date path in the Australian city of Gisborne.
Working with Macedon Ranges County CouncilThe up-to-date path acts as a proof of concept of sorts. The concrete path consists of three sections: a section of established concrete made with sand that acts as a control group, a section made with wood chip biochar, and a third made with coffee biochar, a product made by heating used coffee grounds to 350°C (662°F) in an oxygen-free environment.
People can now walk freely on the pavement, and RMIT researchers will return regularly to check how the three different types of concrete perform. If successful, biochar-based concretes could be adopted more widely across Australia. RMIT is already working with civil infrastructure, asphalt and road grading company BildGroup on upcoming projects in Victoria that will utilize coffee concrete.
In Australia alone, an estimated 75 million kilograms (165 million pounds) of coffee grounds are used each year, most of which ends up in landfill. Because of its higher density, this amount could replace up to 655 million kilograms (1.4 billion pounds) of sand, a finite resource used to make concrete. If adopted globally, a round 10 billion kilograms of coffee grounds per year could replace 90 billion kilograms of sand. Almost 200 billion pounds. Every year.
Coffee: it is tastier than sand and is a stronger building material.
