Money from Coffee Husk

This is primarily helpful for you if you have access to the actual coffee plant itself. This is because you can market not only the coffee beans but the coffee skins or the husks as well. With the price of coffee beans going down, selling coffee husks might just be what you need.

Normally coffee husks are discarded after the coffee beans are extracted. The coffee husks are usually discarded in the soil were they make the soil too nutrient dense. As a result, they make the soil toxic.

This is not saying that coffee husks are toxic to begin with. Small amounts of coffee husks are actually used to enrich the soil and are used as a light pesticide. But too much coffee husks in the soil is bad for the soil.

Coffee Husk As Beverage

“Cascara” is a tea beverage that is made from coffee husks. It is also known as Sultana in Bolivia and Qishr in Yemen. It has been served either hot or cold in these regions since historical times.

It is a much more flavorful than actual coffee beans because it does not have to be roasted to be consumed. As a result, it is easier to prepare than coffee and is a regular beverage for the people in these regions.

For the moment its price is even greater than normal coffee beans. This is a big help to the farmers who are struggling with the low price of coffee beans which is dictated by the international market.

But Will Coffee Drinkers Like It?

Big coffee shop companies like Starbucks are already mixing their regular coffee with it. It would be interesting to know how the customers of these coffee shop companies like Starbucks would behave. This is if they ever know that their coffee has coffee husks in them.

We know that sometimes there are adverse reactions from customers when companies tinker or change the ingredients of their products especially with food.

There are plenty of stories online where angry customers would try to incite a boycott of a company’s product when they change the ingredients of their products. Coffee companies and farmers should be wary of this happening to them.

For example, when The Coca-Cola Company introduced a new flavor of Coke, the company received a backlash from the drinkers of their famous soda beverage. The company had no choice but to withdraw their new flavored soda product from the market.

Starbucks As A Model

But Starbucks is happily bucking the trend. They have a line of coffee husk flavored beverages that has been well received. One of them is the “Cascara Latte” and is being sold at a premium price.

So, if you have access to coffee husks, you can market them to coffee companies similar to Starbucks. You may even get a premium price for them. This is considering they are currently perceived as more popular than coffee beans by these companies.

Side Note: Starbucks does own a coffee plantation called Hacienda Alsacia which is located in Costa Rica. It is their global research and development facility and is also a working coffee farm.

It aims to increase coffee plant knowledge and also to raise the profitability of coffee farmers. It is open to visitors. This could be a good opportunity for you to know about coffee and the coffee industry by going to this plantation.

Coffee Husk as Flour

Coffee flour is also made from the coffee cherry. This gluten-free option is supposed to have 5 times the fiber of whole grain wheat. It is used to provide the fruity dark taste in cookies, cakes and so on.

A check on Amazon provided me with coffee flour products that are directly marketed to consumers. They are not labeled “coffee husk flour” but they do come from coffee husks. In fact, if you Google the search keywords: “coffee husk flour” there would be plenty of articles that state that coffee flour comes from coffee husks.

Coffee flour is brought as a premium baking ingredient due to its perceived nutritional values. Do not make the mistake however of concluding that all products on Amazon with the word “husk” on it means it came from coffee.

Selling To Bakeries And Health stores

There are other products like the popular “psyllium husk” products which could be mistaken for coffee husks. Psyllium comes from the Plantago Ovata plant’s seeds and are also being marketed as nutritious flour with the “husk” label in them.

As a seller of coffee husks, you could sell coffee flour directly to consumers as what these sellers in Amazon are doing. Alternatively, you could sell coffee husk flour to bakeries and health stores.

You can sell them in bulk to these businesses who in turn can retail repackage in smaller quantities to their customers. Alternatively, you can sell them in small quantities to bakeries and health stores who can’t be bothered to repackage them in smaller quantities.

How Do You Make Coffee Husk Flour?

It is not complicated. All you need to do is to ensure that the coffee husk is fully dried up before you mill it into a fine powder. One thing you have to consider though is the cleanliness of the coffee husk.

This means that you need to check if there is dirt and other possible contaminants in the coffee husk. If you are harvesting coffee yourself, then this should not be a problem. Once you separate the coffee beans from the coffee husk, you only need to ensure that both are in clean containers and are washed.

If you just purchase coffee husks from other people like farmers, you need to check with them how they handle coffee husks. These people might not care for coffee husks the same way they care for coffee beans.

Coffee Husks Absorbs Toxic Dye

According to many scientific websites such as ScienceDirect and SAGE Journal, coffee husks can absorb toxic dyes and pigments. Dyes and pigments are used by many companies for coloring their products.

Huge amounts of colored waste water is generated for example by the jeans industry. This waste water usually ends up being pumped back to water sources such as rivers which can be sources of drinking water as well as fish habitats.

When toxic colored waste water mixes with fresh river water, the river water becomes polluted. People drinking from river will become contaminated with toxins. Even the fishes living in the river will be contaminated. They could die from contamination.

If these contaminated fishes don’t die, they can be caught and eaten by people. In turn, the people who ate the fish could become contaminated, get sick and might even die in the process.

Treated coffee husks have been found to absorb almost ninety-seven percent of these toxic dyes and pigments. This means that coffee husks are good at making water safe and clean once again.

Selling For An Environmental Cause

This strategy is not yet popularly adapted and it would take government action to be implemented. There are already plans by some governments in Africa to actually implement this strategy.

The only concern that these governments have, is that due to the popularity of coffee husks for other uses, there might not be enough supply for them to implement their water treatment projects.

This means that if you are a seller of coffee husks, you could likely end up having the government as your client. It is the government who cleans rivers and other bodies of water and if they use coffee husks, the better it is for you.

It might also happen that the government would order companies that produce colored waste water to clean up their own waste water for possible reuse. They could also become one of your customers.

Coffee Husks as Mosquito Biopesticides

According again to the website Science Direct, coffee husks can be used as effective biopesticides against mosquitos. They kill the mosquitos during the larva stage, preventing them from growing in the first place to bite people.

Scientists found that if coffee husk is introduced to water, it produces spore/crystal toxins that are very deadly to mosquito larva. Once the spore/crystal is ingested by the mosquito larva, the larva effectively dies.

The scientists also experimented with other plants but found that coffee husks were the most effective anti-mosquito biopesticides they can produce. For example scientists concluded that coconuts and potatoes are less effective than coffee husks.

As a coffee husk seller, you can take advantage of this study to market your coffee husks to mosquito infested regions. You can have the government as well as ordinary people as your clients.

You not only make money but you also prevent the possible deaths of people who might be bitten by mosquitos. As we all know, mosquito bites can become very lethal because of the diseases they transmit. One of this lethal diseases is malaria.

Coffee Husk as Biodegradable Cups

An Australian startup is one of many who now produces single use disposable coffee cups called HuskeeCup made from coffee husks. They may be an Australian company but their products are available in America thanks to Amazon.

Although they have good products which are helpful in reducing ecological waste, they face stiff competition from other companies who have the same concept but uses different plants as their base material.

I have even seen a South American company for example who not only make their disposable plates from pineapple husks, but also infuses their product with plant seeds that could grow once they are disposed back to nature.

This means that as an environmentally friendly product they have a better product than the others. Their products are bought even though they have premium prices. The other manufacturers could stand to benefit from their example.

This means that using coffee husks as a product in the field of disposable and reusable containers for food and other uses is viable. This means that coffee husk products are a viable alternative product to plastic products.

It is more helpful to note that there are customers who are willing to pay a premium for products that are more nature based than plastic products. This is good business and environmental news.

The Bad News

However, what is a clear is that the technology for turning coffee husks into biodegradable food containers and other products is common knowledge already and can easily be learned. In fact, I managed to gain my coffee husk products information by just using the internet. Companies involved in the recycling of plant husks do not have a competitive advantage anymore and would have to resort to other competitive advantages in order to stand out in the market.

The Good News

The good news is that the market for disposable cups is predicted to grow at an exponential rate due to the increasing habit of people to drink beverages not prepared from home.

This is only one good news. All in all, coffee husks demand is increasing as more businesspersons learn to produce more products from it. People for example are getting more health conscious and want coffee flour in their bread.

There are still other uses of coffee husks that is beyond the scope of this current article. From use as food to construction materials, the list of the uses of coffee husks goes on and on.

Conclusion

As you can see above there are plenty of opportunities for making money from coffee husks. You can be a seller to those who use coffee husks or you can produce coffee husk products yourself and then sell them.

Is important to remind yourself though that growing coffee, together with the associated technology to develop products from it is not a competitive advantage anymore especially when there are alternative plants and products around.

You might also like to read the article: Making Money From Coffee.