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Parisians wake up to coffee-fuelled urban mushroom magic
PARIS, Feb 24, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – From a container wafts the sweetly pungent
odour of coffee grounds which, far from being discarded as waste, are being
lucratively recycled to produce oyster mushrooms.
Grounds, which Parisian brasseries throw out daily by the tonne, are
perfect for the job, and a snapshot of a fast-growing urban agricultural
trend.
The mulch of grounds is mixed with cardboard and wood chips and shoved
into lengths of plastic with pieces of mushroom culture.
They are then hung vertically in a dark space and left to incubate for a
fortnight.
“We are reproducing undergrowth subsoil conditions. The temperature and
humidity are comparable,” explains Arnaud Ulrich, co-founder of UpCycle-La
boite … champignons (mushroom box), based in the Paris suburb of Saint-Nom-
la-Breteche.
Nestled away from the light, the spores of mushroom mycelium fungus — a
key food source for many soil invertebrates and which can also help to clean
polluted soil — rapidly spread as they would beneath the roots of a tree.
After incubation, the bags containing the grounds and spores, by now
completely white, are transferred to a different room for “fructification”.
– Cue the lights –
There, the lights are switched on and humidity reduced. Cuts are made in
the bags, allowing the mushrooms to emerge.
“The mushrooms are ‘stressed’ — which makes them want to reproduce and
free up their spores, leave the bags,” says Ulrich. “It simply remains to
harvest them.”
Ulrich says urban agriculture is first and foremost about recycling
organic waste from cities as a means of expanding the move towards a
regenerative, ‘circular economy’ making more judicious use of finite
resources.
“Thirty percent of urban waste is useful biowaste and today, only five
percent of this organic matter is recycled,” he notes.
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“We are just doing what they did in the 19th Century, but with modern
methods,” he said.
At that time, “Paris mushrooms” were also born from the idea of recycling
organic matter.
Market gardeners cultivated their produce in quarries on the perimeter of
the capital making use of the droppings of the thousands of horses who helped
to deliver vegetables to the market at Les Halles in central Paris.
– Smell that coffee again –
Today, some 20 tonnes of coffee grounds are collected each month in and
around Paris, the bulk from large firms’ restaurants in the west of the city.
From that can be produced around two tonnes of oyster mushrooms.
At 15 euros ($17) per kilo that equates to a 30,000 euro ‘harvest’ and a
campaign is under way to encourage more Parisian cafes to get in on the act.
“It’s a virtuous undertaking — we are producing between 20 and 30 kilos
of grounds a week,” says Romain Vidal, 30 and the owner of Le Sully brasserie
in Paris and a pioneer of the recycling technique.
“And our chef puts the oyster mushrooms on the menu for the brasserie’s
customers,” he adds.
The chef concurs, saying he is “delighted,” describing the mushrooms as
thick and juicy.
After every expresso, every cappuccino, Le Sully’s waiters bag the used
grounds which a delivery biker from the coffee company whisks away so further
use can be made of them.
Paris’s deep-rooted cafe culture means there is no shortage of the stuff –
– the city annually produces around 600,000 tonnes of grounds, according to
UpCycle, which is helping manage similar projects in several other French
towns.
After harvesting, the already recycled grounds embark upon their third
lifespan, returning to the ground as compost — or ‘champost’, a play on
words with champignon, French for mushroom — mixed in with mushroom strands
and wood cellulose.
With their system up and running, Ulrich and co are branching out by
installing “Rocket” compost machines in the heart of Paris’ La Defense
business centre.
The machines swallow up organic waste from restaurants such as peelings
and leftover food waste, be it meat or fish, as well as grass cuttings.
The resulting scrunched up waste produces compost in record time… which
in turn will be utilised to spawn more Parisian mushrooms from September.
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