Dear Reader,
When it comes it beauty, it can be frustrating for the sustainability-minded person to find products that aren’t harmful to the environment, animals, or people and are reasonably priced. I am pleased to report that I have found an exfoliating scrub that you can use on your face and body that can be organic, environmentally-conscious, Fair Trade, and even free!
One day, I was grinding up some coffee beans had been left too long and gotten stale. We had originally intended them to go into the compost bin, but when ran my fingers through some of the grounds I realized that this coffee had just about the same consistency as my favorite facial scrub. A quick Internet search confirmed it: yes! You can use coffee grounds as an exfoliating scrub.
When it comes it beauty, it can be frustrating for the sustainability-minded person to find products that aren’t harmful to the environment, animals, or people and are reasonably priced. I am pleased to report that I have found an exfoliating scrub that you can use on your face and body that can be organic, environmentally-conscious, Fair Trade, and even free!
One day, I was grinding up some coffee beans had been left too long and gotten stale. We had originally intended them to go into the compost bin, but when ran my fingers through some of the grounds I realized that this coffee had just about the same consistency as my favorite facial scrub. A quick Internet search confirmed it: yes! You can use coffee grounds as an exfoliating scrub.
Why is this so exciting?
Firstly, you can use the coffee as a scrub instead of just throwing it out. I talked to Diane Hazard, who is the Education Coordinator at The Solana Center for Environmental Innovation. She confirmed that, for most municipalities, anything that goes down the drain in your home goes through the sewer and gets treated. Solid waste, including coffee grounds, is sorted out and often becomes fertilizer, so your grounds have a good, full life cycle instead of just sitting around in a landfill.
Also, if you choose to buy new beans, there are a lot of options that are good for the environment and good for people. This coffee, for example, is fair trade, organic, and shade-grown, which means that it isn’t grown with toxic pesticides and it does not destroy the biodiversity of the land (as unshaded coffee can).
Finally, coffee is, for a beauty product, fairly inexpensive. This scrub is free if you’re using grounds that have already been used for brewing. If you decide to buy coffee specifically for scrub purposes, that coffee I mentioned earlier sells for about $0.89 an ounce; my conventional facial scrub was $6.00 an ounce! (Bert’s Bees, if you must know.)
After using my coffee ground scrub consistently for a few months now, and trying many different variations, I can say that this is now my favorite way to exfoliate. The grit of coffee is a great exfoliant, and I like that there’s just a little bit of coffee oil left on my skin after the scrub is rinsed off.
If you’re interested in doing your own coffee scrub, here are some tips and tricks I would like to share with you:
If you try the coffee scrub or have any other eco-friendly beauty tips that you’d like to share, please let us know!
Firstly, you can use the coffee as a scrub instead of just throwing it out. I talked to Diane Hazard, who is the Education Coordinator at The Solana Center for Environmental Innovation. She confirmed that, for most municipalities, anything that goes down the drain in your home goes through the sewer and gets treated. Solid waste, including coffee grounds, is sorted out and often becomes fertilizer, so your grounds have a good, full life cycle instead of just sitting around in a landfill.
Also, if you choose to buy new beans, there are a lot of options that are good for the environment and good for people. This coffee, for example, is fair trade, organic, and shade-grown, which means that it isn’t grown with toxic pesticides and it does not destroy the biodiversity of the land (as unshaded coffee can).
Finally, coffee is, for a beauty product, fairly inexpensive. This scrub is free if you’re using grounds that have already been used for brewing. If you decide to buy coffee specifically for scrub purposes, that coffee I mentioned earlier sells for about $0.89 an ounce; my conventional facial scrub was $6.00 an ounce! (Bert’s Bees, if you must know.)
After using my coffee ground scrub consistently for a few months now, and trying many different variations, I can say that this is now my favorite way to exfoliate. The grit of coffee is a great exfoliant, and I like that there’s just a little bit of coffee oil left on my skin after the scrub is rinsed off.
If you’re interested in doing your own coffee scrub, here are some tips and tricks I would like to share with you:
- There are a number of different DIY coffee scrub recipes online (including this one from The Spicy Stiletto) . I prefer to just add water to coffee grounds until the scrub is the consistency I want. I use about 1/2 cup of grounds per shower as a body scrub.
- I did not like the recipe I tried that included oil as part of the scrub. The oil made the grounds very sticky and rinsing became quite a chore. Also, oils (and anything else you add to the scrub) may not be as eco-friendly or inexpensive as your coffee.
- Speaking of inexpensive, Starbucks gives you free used coffee grounds if you ask! They gave me a bag of approximately 5 lbs worth, so this should last you a long time. (I bet I could have gotten away with less coffee if I had brought a smaller container and just asked them to fill that.) The barista I spoke to said that these were still sanitary even after being used, and yes, there are other folks like me who like to use the grounds as a scrub.
- If you’re a coffee drinker, you can also use your own coffee grounds for your scrub. I have scrubbed with unbrewed coffee and used grounds, and there did not seem to be much of a difference between the two.
- Grounds that are kept wet for a long time may start growing mold, so it might be a good idea to spread these out on a cooking sheet (or several) and let them air dry before storing.
- Consistency-wise, pre-ground coffee is about perfect. If you’re grinding your own coffee, make sure to eliminate any large chunks from your grounds – these just do not work at all. For a scrub, coffee that is too finely ground would be better than grounds that are too coarse. The Starbucks coffee that I tried was a very fine grind; it was closer to powder than it was to sand. This was fun to use but left coffee residue on my skin, so you may want to consider just using Starbucks as a facial scrub and washing your face afterwards.
- Coffee grounds can clog sink drains, so I recommend using this scrub in the shower instead of at the sink.
- This scrub is messy – it looks like I’ve been dancing on Oreos in my shower when I use it. To mitigate water lost for cleanup, consider capturing the water as you wait for your shower to heat up and using that water to rinse out your shower afterwards.
- These grounds get everywhere when used as a body scrub. (Yes, even there.) If you don’t rinse thoroughly, you will smell like coffee for the rest of the day. This may or may not be a good thing depending on how you and your loved ones feel about coffee.
- I have fair skin, and I did not notice the coffee staining my skin. Nor has it stained anything in my shower, even the white plastic measuring cup I use to store the grounds in.
- Caffeine can be absorbed through the skin, though it's hard to say how much you would absorb using a coffee scrub. According to The Beauty Brains, you would have to have coffee on your skin for an hour to get a dose equivalent to a cup of coffee.
- If you end up with more coffee grounds than you can use as a body scrub, coffee can be composted! Gardening Know How has some great information on composting, vermicomposting, and other gardening uses for coffee grounds.
If you try the coffee scrub or have any other eco-friendly beauty tips that you’d like to share, please let us know!