Coffee grounds

[Vaca Russ]

I agree with Balzaccom and Artrock 23. Pack in VIA. If the taste bothers you, pack in a little sugar.

I do NOT agree with Rockchucker:

Or don't even bring coffee!

No coffee! C'mon man...be serious.

-Russ

[longri]

The original poster asked if it was ok to dump coffee grounds (I think?), and by law, it's not. I would think as a responsible forum, we would want those going into the Sierra to respect the laws required for their visit (whether we do or not).

We all decide which rules we are going to break, bend or disregard, and nothing I say is going to change that. But let's at least steer people in the lawful direction and let them figure out what rules they will break on their own.

I wasn't asking about the legality of it. I wanted to know if was harmful to the environment and, if so, in what way exactly. Also, does any harm depend on the type of terrain, elevation, vegetation, soil, precipitation, and level of human visitation?

[longri]

I agree with Balzaccom and Artrock 23. Pack in VIA. If the taste bothers you, pack in a little sugar.

VIA tastes almost exactly like Starbucks coffee, so I pack in both sugar and half & half to make that charcoal flavored stuff drinkable. It also costs twice as much per cup as freshly roasted artisan beans.

[rlown]

I wasn't asking about the legality of it. I wanted to know if was harmful to the environment and, if so, in what way exactly. Also, does any harm depend on the type of terrain, elevation, vegetation, soil, precipitation, and level of human visitation?

It's not any more harmful than other "stuff" we bury. I do tend to bury the grounds from the Press. If i'm in a talus zone, it might not get buried. I don't just put a big pile of grounds sitting there for someone to stumble upon. Some of the presses seem to come apart rather abruptly about day 7. And with some twist ties, stripped (wire), i can put them back together. The new TI versions might be better but very few trips these days with other coffee drinkers. Most are doing Tea now.

I only take the press on trips with others that enjoy that type of coffee. If I don't have other coffee drinkers on a trip, i take the Via. no sugar though.

[BillyBobBurro]

Tossing the grounds into the campfire seems to work pretty go so far. Granted, that is if you can have a campfire in the area you are camping at.

Which kind of leads into to a bigger issue. If you are in an area that does not allow fires due to altitude then most likeily there is not much soil to support composting. The grounds would we either bone dry or frozen solid. Desiccating and packing out is the obvious choice. But if you are in a lower elevation area and there is actually soil around then natural decomposition could actually happen. Are coffee ground that much different then broken up pine needles, leaves, deer/bear droppings and wood?

This kind of ties into the whole "human waste" discussion. Not everyone is camping in the heavily visited and delicate Whitney zone. What works or is needed in one area does not hold true everywhere else.

[sparky]

No it is not OK to dump just anything that is biodegradable.

Go get you a bottle of biodegradable solvent like limonene and dump it on a patch of wildflowers and see what happens.

I realize this isnt what the thread was about, I just want to reiterate it is not ok to just dump whatever you want as long as it is "biodegradable".

Coffee grounds in reality isn't a big deal at all, but it isn't good to put it out there on the internet that certain things are OK to leave in the mountains. Foolish people will run with that and who knows what will happen next.

[sparky]

BTW, does HST have a neighborhood cleanup day? I found a camp (a few years old) out on the end of San Joaquin Ridge that someone left (probably because it was wet). It is biodegrading/composting, but it needs to come out. Any interest?

I mentioned this last year or the year before after finding a bunch of garbage at the lakes above convict lake (i dont remember which one)

I still would be all in on something like this. Just a Sat dayhike or maybe twice a year?

[Rockchucker]

I agree with Balzaccom and Artrock 23. Pack in VIA. If the taste bothers you, pack in a little sugar.

I do NOT agree with Rockchucker:

Or don't even bring coffee!

No coffee! C'mon man...be serious.

-Russ

I don't drink coffee so it's easy for me to say!

[John Dittli]

It is doubtful anyone can answer that question definitively. I doubt there has been a study on the effect of coffee grounds on various mountain environments. We can speculate that anything "organic" will decompose faster at lower elevations, but what's the effect? At higher elevations there may be less initial impact as there is less biodiversity. There will be more impact where there are more people dumping coffee grounds.

You can be assured that anything you leave (and everything you do), has some sort of impact, large or small, usually of unknown consequences, good or bad. To that end, a "purist" will follow the letter of the law and minimize what they leave. In that way, they don't have to question whether, let's say "coffee grounds", are going to be eaten by a critter habituating them to the location or cause other harm, dug up if buried (causing additional impacts), change the ph of the soil no matter how minutely, etc, etc.

Interestingly, remove the human experience factor as you suggest, and just focus on "environmental impact", you are better off leaving the non-biodegradable products like hard plastic and metal. It's less likely to attract animals and takes a long time to breakdown so there is little change to the environment other than some off gassing and perhaps a little blocking of some solar radiation.

The question can't be answered, the individual Wilderness user has to decide for themselves how much impact they are willing to leave regardless of law.

Good luck and happy trails!

John

[Jimr]

If you can pack it in, you can pack it out.

The extra weight will be more than offset by the reduction of food into poop.