Coffee, the world's second most traded commodity after oil, generates over 2 billion cups daily, resulting in over 8 million tons of spent coffee grounds annually, mostly ending up in landfills. However, a recent study on Psy.org reveals a potential packaging solution for spent grounds. Srinivas Janaswamy, an associate professor at South Dakota State University, demonstrates how these grounds could be transformed into biodegradable films that might one day replace plastics.
Janaswamy's research focuses on creating biodegradable alternatives to plastics using agricultural byproducts. Previous projects involved materials like avocado peels and corn stover. In this study, spent coffee grounds were chosen for several reasons.
