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The ground coffee mulch is mixed with cardboard and wood chips and inserted into pieces of plastic with pieces of mushroom culture
From one container emerges the sweet and pungent smell of coffee grounds which, far from being discarded, is profitably recycled to produce oyster mushrooms.
The land, which Parisian breweries throw daily, is perfect for this job and allows you to take a snapshot of the growing trend of urban agriculture.
The mulch is mixed with cardboard and wood chips and pushed into pieces of plastic with pieces of mushrooms.
They are then suspended vertically in a dark space and allowed to incubate for fifteen days.
"We reproduce the conditions of the subsoil.The temperature and humidity are comparable," says Arnaud Ulrich, cofounder of UpCycle-The mushroom box, based in Saint-Nom-la-Breteche.
Nestled away from light, the spores of the mycelium fungus, an essential food source for many soil invertebrates that can also help clean up polluted soils, are spreading rapidly as they would be under the roots of the soil. 39, a tree.
After incubation, the bags containing the soils and spores, now completely white, are transferred to another room for "fruiting".
Cue the lights
There, the lights are on and the rate of humidity reduced. The cuts are made in the bags, allowing the mushrooms to come out.
"The mushrooms are" stressed ", which causes them to want to reproduce and release their spores, to leave the bags," explains Ulrich. "It just remains to harvest them."
According to Ulrich, urban agriculture is primarily about recycling organic waste from cities as a way of expanding the transition to a regenerative "circular economy" making better use of scarce resources.
"Thirty percent of urban waste is bio-waste and today only five percent of this organic matter is recycled," he notes.
"We only do what they did in the 19th century, but with modern methods," he said.
Mushrooms fed on coffee are sometimes part of the menu of cafes that previously provided the ground for growing
At that time, "Parisian mushrooms" were also born from the idea of recycling organic materials.
The market gardeners cultivated their products in quarries located in the perimeter of the capital, by exploiting the droppings of thousands of horses having contributed to the delivery of vegetables to the market of the Halles, in the center of Paris.
Feel that coffee again
Today, nearly 20 tons of ground coffee are collected every month in and around Paris, mainly in the restaurants of large companies in the west of the city. From there, it is possible to produce about two tons of oyster mushrooms.
At 15 euros (17 dollars) per kilo, this amounts to a "harvest" of 30,000 euros and a campaign is underway to encourage more Parisian cafes to engage in the act.
"It is a virtuous company, we produce between 20 and 30 kg of land per week," says Romain Vidal, 30, owner of the brewery Le Sully in Paris and pioneer of recycling technology.
"And our chef puts oyster mushrooms on the menu of the brewery's customers," he adds.
The chef shares this view, saying "delighted", describing the mushrooms as thick and juicy.
After each espresso, each cappuccino, Le Sully's servers carry the patterns used as a delivery biker from the coffee company takes them away so that they can be used further.
The deep-rooted coffee culture in Paris means that products are not lacking: the city produces around 600,000 tons of land each year, according to UpCycle, which helps manage similar projects in several other French cities.
After the harvest, the already recycled soils begin their third life, and return to the soil in the form of compost – or "champost", a word game with mushroom, French for mushroom – mixed with mushroom and wood cellulose.
With their operational system, Ulrich and his employees diversify by installing "Rocket" compost machines in the heart of the La Défense business center in Paris.
The machines gobble up organic waste from restaurants, such as peels and leftover food, whether it's meat or fish, as well as cuttings from the grbad.
The resulting accumulated waste produces compost in record time … which will be used to produce more Parisian mushrooms from September.
Explore further:
How to grow a structure using mushroom sausages & # 39;
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