Turn your old coffee grounds into a facial, insect & slug repellent, even a deodorant and more!
Do you enjoy a cup of organic fair trade coffee? Now you can recycle your coffee grounds. Turn them into compost, plant fertiliser, insect repellent, slug deterrent, even a high quality skin exfoliate and facial. Gabrielle Anderson explains how.
A French woman I play music with recently gave me this top tip for re-using coffee grounds. You might already be aware of the benefits of adding old coffee grounds to the compost bin, and perhaps also using them as a plant food directly around roses for instance. But there are many other ways in which used coffee grounds are just the ticket. I am now using them as a fantastic exfoliate for my skin. Using an old loofah or just your hand, work the grounds with a bit of soap all over your body in the shower. It works beautifully. Apparently expensive cellulite creams contains caffeine so this scrub is especially good for your thighs and bottom. It can be used more gently on your face as the grounds gently firm and tone your skin, minimizing pores and sloughing off dead cells so that the fresh new skin underneath is revealed.
I've been using a little regularly now and can say that I am really noticing the difference. And that's not all! From my internet research it seems old coffee grounds can be used as a deodorizer for removing fishy and garlic smells on your hands after cooking (just run a few over your hands and rinse). For an insect repellant one can sprinkle old grounds around places you don't want ants, or on the ant piles themselves and they will move on or stay away. Used grounds are also said to repel snails and slugs. As a cleaning product, as they're slightly abrasive, grounds can be used as a scouring agent for greasy and grimy stain-resistant objects. Finally, as a cat repellent to keep your own or other unwanted cats from using the garden as a toilet sprinkle grounds mixed with orange peels around your plants. Now you can enjoy your organic fair trade morning coffee confident in the knowledge that it will be re-used and recycled to the max!
Gabrielle Anderson and her husband Stuart run a permaculture smallholding in Brittany, France and write a regular blog.
Readers - do you have more coffee grounds ideas? Please add your comments at the end of this Solution. Thanks!
