Processing JIVA Coffee waste by products at DITO’S GARDEN Worm Farm Mauritius

The vermicomposting farm was begun in summer 2022 at DITO’S GARDEN in the north of Mauritius at one of the last green spots of Grand Baie (so say many visitors!). An organised site visit at DITO’S GARDEN upon reservation is possible which we sum up with a nice DITO’S KOMBUCHA drink with view on the garden from the terrace.

You can read here about where I describe the beginnings of this endeavour please don’t take the descriptions of my first setups at face value as tutorials to replicate, a lot of new improvements and lessons learnt have come along. Just like there are different ways to do worm bedding. A part 2 of where I am with the worm farm is definitely also due. It is now also possible to acquire worm bin setups on a case to case basis. There are factors that determine this such as having enough worms ready to go etc. and of-course workmanship time to do the builds. The persons who contacted me first now have their worm bins for their backyard gardens. The positive response from the first buyers has been very heart warming an encouraging. It also fits in as a great setup for families, kids tend to find worms fascinating too. It can also spark something in your own soul observing and collaborating with the worms to make awesome compost for your garden.

We’ve got these box setups that we build at DITO’S GARDEN,

it includes raw material bedding and some training from me. I’m mentioning this right here at the beginning as a little update for those who have been following the worm journey! 🙂 This is to answer the question, can we get worms and worm bin setups – YES. But currently very limited. Likewise it’s also possible to acquire vermicompost for those of you garden owners reading in that don’t want to manage a worm bin but prefer to just apply the vermicompost.

In this article I will show you a few pictures and descriptions of how a worm farm can be used to process various types of waste to produce fertile compost. By the way, if you run a business (for e.g. like a coffee shop), are a sustainability officer, want to reduce your organisations impact, give back to mother nature, participate in a circular economy, or feel that we are all one big family living on the same planet and would like to have some of your organic matter waste processed going back into the life cycle of mother nature instead of it ending at Mare Chicose, please do contact me. You might also have a property that produces a lot of browns like leafs? Keep in mind that we do not have a transportation logistics in place that can come fetch waste. On case to case basis we can find an arrangement. It is either the businesses or volunteers that will come drop the materials. We are also interested in brown waste such as bulk of leafs for example and greens such as seaweed.

As expected it took a 2 year period of learning curve, building the setups, figuring out how to build them from own designs and worm breeding to reach the current critical mass. This is where we are at, we’ve got breeder bins that produce worms and 1056L volume of vermicompost every 6 months. Only 1 DITO’S Worm Bin setup will produce enough compost for a small garden, you would be making like +4 buckets of 20L every 6 months!

We’ve got +12 large worm bins that do the bulk work, each worm bin being approximately 500L Volume. And we’ve got 12 bio composters of 1000L volume each that produces compost from greens such as seaweed, browns from leafs, and manures which in turn when it’s ready gets transferred to the worms to process and fertilize additionally.

This is what the bio composters look like with seaweed:

JIVA COFFEE

I like making pour over coffee with a series of techniques like the Japanese would do their tea ceremony. All the steps and processes is something I find fun. This might be interesting for the coffee roasters of JIVA COFFEE when reading this is that the first time I came across their mention was through twitter now called the X platform run by Elon Musk. A few years back the platform X had a small community (many in IT) of Mauritians online who would discuss about many topics, such as coffee. And many recommended JIVA COFFEE which is a local coffee roaster who takes great care of selecting their beans with all the due diligence. Back then it wasn’t available at the Super U supermarket in Grand Baie which is now the case. So I’ve tried several of their roasts and they are really good! Am a fan of dark roasts. Preferred source of countries is Peru, Colombia, Costa Rica and Indonesia.

Making a good cup of coffee has been a quest since a decade. I’ve always been curious what I need to change and improve in the process. I literally learnt some stuff only …11 years later! Like the ratio of coffee to water and also a rough estimate how much caffeine I will want the coffee to have to be not too strong. I use a precise electronic scale for this. And thanks to James Hoffmann I also learnt of the super importance of a really good coffee grinder! I’m now all set with this gear and have come a long way from the last time I wrote in 2015:

The quest to make a good cup of coffee in Mauritius from local and import beans

A new coffee article is due where I can go more into details with the ratios and the way I make pour over coffee. Am so glad I finally got to understand the ratios of coffee weight of your beans and the water you’ll use.

I’ve so far had these 2 coffee roasts from JIVA which I do like a lot!

My first contact with JIVA COFFEE

My first interaction with JIVA COFFEE was through social media when I posted my review and recommendation of their coffee. From this resulted a chat which later on led to meeting in person as I was looking for coffee waste products that I can have the worm farm process. I had also been looking for jute bags waste and was glad that I found a collaborator who was and is willing to supply me these regularly. The jute bags is a great add on to a worm bin for humidity. It will only last 2-3 months until it’s completely done. The other by product of JIVA COFFEE that I can process is their coffee chaff. Vermicomposting worms adore all sorts of coffee waste by products! The coffee chaff is something that will be processed in less than a month.

JIVA COFFEE takes their whole supply chain from start to finish very seriously. Read more here on Phil’s story. From where they source their beans till the end of the chain, what happens with the waste at the roaster and soon to come coffee shop in Tamarin. Nothing is just simply discarded. They are also in the process of getting the Made in Moris label which has a rigorous check list. Their choices of management and ambitions lead to an incentive model to also consider applying effort to the life cycle of waste. I mention this as I have contacted other coffee shop chains in the past who have simply no interest to sort their waste, it all just ends up mixed in plastic bags. 🙁 I hope they will gradually all embark on the sustainability awareness train. The Made in Moris label in my observation does encourage changing practices for the better!

So, this remains as a shout out to coffee shops and locations more closer to me in Grand Baie, if you produce coffee waste, like ground coffee and instead of it ending in Mare Chicose, it would be welcome at DITO’S GARDEN for composting. To start with it should be a minimum of around 20L volume, enough to fill a bucket. For the time being we can consider only 1-2 partners as we would have to then discuss the frequency. We can supply the buckets.

Processing & Recycling coffee waste by products of JIVA COFFEE in worm bins as part of our vermicomposting process

This is one of the big 500L volume worm bins. Own design, we build them at DITO’S GARDEN.

You can see here the coffee chaff in the bag and jute bags about to be added to the worm bins.

Over the course of time I have figured out doing a split of the different materials fed to the worms. It leaves room as a measure of giving the worm the option to migrate to the other half of materials in case there is something they don’t like. Materials that mix can hot compost which is something we want to avoid happening in a worm bin. Here you see one half split with coffee chaff and in the other half is horse manure.

Applying the jute bag over the materials to be composted.

Here you can see the jute bags in the breeder bins. You wouldn’t tell, these boxes as breeder bins will produce 1056L volume vermicompost! That’s 53 buckets (20L)!

End Note

Voila, here you can see one of the many possibilities how waste can be turned into compost. I’m glad that we can process these by products that come from the JIVA COFFEE roaster.

We also process a large amount of cardboard of which we have no lack to source as it’s abundantly available at our neighbouring shopping centre Jkalachand.

We still have capacity to process more and would love to have a source of coffee ground ideally close by here in Grand Baie. This is what we currently lack a bit. We also need more browns, like dried leafs for the big 1000L bio composters (different to the worm bins). The bio composters is where we also use seaweed, this would be a future article to look up to 🙂

Leave me a comment if the article spoke to you and if you want to share something.

Best regards,
Dito