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The pop-up farm on our roastery parking lot is a little green oasis in the industrial area of Port Melbourne.

We have heritage varieties of tomatoes, corn, zucchini, pumpkin, spring onion, beetroot, rainbow chard, spinach, silverbeet, flowers to attract beneficial insects and also a range of herbs like chives, basil, oregano and coriander, and all of this only takes up two parking spaces.

Biofilta and Australian Ecosystems, have collaborated with us to develop super-efficient compact pop-up farms. We often think that we have overcrowded cities,
but if you look at them from the lens of urban farming, we have huge amounts of space. We can flip cities into becoming super-efficient food growers.

Each year, caffeine-loving Aussies produce round 75,000 tonnes of coffee waste, most of it ending up in landfill where it contributes to the production of methane, a greenhouse gas. But coffee grounds don’t have to end up there; they can be composted and used to produce food.

Our pop-up garden uses a mix of composted coffee grounds (rich in minerals and nitrogen), husks from the roastery (a good source of carbon), food scraps and a small amount of manure, to help produce around 300kg of food per year. With the World Health Organisation, recommending adults consume a minimum of 150kg of fresh fruit and veggies per year, it means that one of these pop-up farms could provide enough for two people for a whole year

We would like to see cafes and people around Australia embrace urban farming. We believe cafe’s that recycle coffee grounds to grow food will be on the cutting edge of sustainability, This initiative not only is good for the planet but with the sustainability movement becoming apart of the mainstream new attraction from customers will help expand business. We hope, in a few years, it will be common practice.

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