Plate XIII · section 15 of 15

Today (2023-2026)

Detail of an espresso machine whose portafilter, grate and stainless steel counter are covered with spilled spent coffee grounds. — Group head and drip tray of a machine covered with spent groundsThirdman · Pexels license

The deposit is growing, and several figures are needed to pin it down, because none covers exactly the same scope.

First landmark, world exports of the 2025-2026 crop year. They reached 106.16 million bags from October 2025 to June 2026, and 140.6 million bags over twelve rolling months. The breakdown by species gives 81.59 million bags of arabica and 58.99 of canephora, according to the ICO monthly report of July 2026.

Chronology

1638Vesling distinguishes in Venice the drink of the husks from that of the beans (Ukers).
1732La Roque describes Sultana's coffee, made from skins and parchments, without bitterness.
1886The Pharmaceutical Journal notes that the Arabs of Jeddah infuse the husk and throw away the bean.
1922Trigg (Ukers) lists the uses of the pulp: fertilizer (2.61% N), alcohol from the sugars, fuel.
1979Braham and Bressani, Coffee Pulp: Composition, Technology and Utilization (IDRC).
2011GroCycle grows oyster mushrooms on spent grounds in Devon.
2013Founding of Bio-bean in London; 50,000 t/year plant in 2015.
2016Hamburg bans capsules from municipal buildings.
2017Starbucks launches the Cascara Latte (January 10); 24.6% of Nespresso capsules recycled.
2020Nestlé (May) and Lavazza (November) notifications for cascara as a traditional food.
2022Regulation (EU) 2022/47: cherry pulp and its infusion authorized in the Union (February).
2023Bankruptcy of Bio-bean (March-April); Nespresso paper pods in France and Switzerland.
2024ICO, Beyond Coffee: 40.68 Mt of biomass a year; PPWR regulation adopted on December 19.
2025PPWR in force (February); silverskin tested in plywood and packaging films.
2026Exports 2025-26: 106.16 M bags from October to June (ICO, July).

sources cited in the text

This figure says what crosses a border, not what grows. The exported bag is green coffee, already pulped, hulled and dried in the country of origin. The biomass has never left the farm.

Second landmark, production. The Beyond Coffee report, for its part, reasoned on 165.5 million bags produced. The biomass tonnage announced at the beginning of this plate derives from this total, because the whole calculation starts from the harvested cherry.

Now this total has been revised twice. The ICO raised the figure to 168.2 million as early as December 2023. The Livre café notes that the 2026-2027 crop year exceeds 189 million bags.

In other words, the calculation basis of the reference report is already exceeded by about 14%. All the biomass figures that follow from it are therefore floors, not high estimates.

Two last points of honesty. No Coffee Development Report later than that of 2022-2023 was online on the ICO site on September 7, 2026. And the 40.68 million tonnes of biomass remain, to date, the only consolidated world figure available.

ICO, Coffee Market Report, July 2026, ico.org, accessed on 09/07/2026; ICO 2024, p. 22; LC ch. 20

On cascara, the European Union has had a legal framework since February 2022, obtained by the two biggest roasters on the continent, but the product remains marginal in volume and without a customs code of its own. On spent grounds, the model of mass collection for fuel has gone bankrupt (Bio-bean, 2023) while that of extracting cosmetic ingredients is consolidating (Kaffe Bueno, awards in 2024 and 2025). On silverskin, research published in 2024-2025 tests it as dietary fiber, plywood filler and packaging film. On capsules, Regulation (EU) 2025/40 has been in force since February 11, 2025 and applicable since August 12, 2026; its first dated obligations are the limits on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS, on August 12, 2026, and the compostability of flexible bags and pods on February 12, 2028, before the recyclability criteria of 2030, the date by which Nespresso aims for 60% worldwide recycling. On washing water, the Ethiopian studies of 2021, 2023 and 2024 show that in the leading producing country of Africa most stations discharge without effective treatment, while Colombia has deployed a water-free technology on about 20,000 units. The circularity of coffee, in 2026, is real where the material falls near an industry, and almost nil where it falls in bulk.

Regulation (EU) 2022/47; Lekto Woodfuels, January 2025; kaffebueno.com; Wronka et al. 2025; Petaloti et al. 2025; Regulation (EU) 2025/40; nestle-nespresso.com/sustainability; Genanaw et al. 2021, Amare et al. 2023, Ulsido et al. 2024; González-Freire & Martínez-Hernández 2022

Gray areas

What the sources do not allow us to assert. We say so rather than filling the gap.

The shares of each co-product are ICO averages over heterogeneous cherries and processes; Trigg (1922) gave 68% pulp, 6% parchment and 26% coffee, and the share of silverskin ranges from 0.4% of the cherry (ICO) to 1-2% (Angeloni et al. 2020) depending on the calculation basis.
The world tonnage of spent grounds is 11.4 Mt a year according to the ICO (2024) and 6 Mt according to Lee et al. (2023); the two estimates rest on different assumptions (total consumption versus the instant coffee industry) and no direct measurement exists.
Water consumption of the washed process ranges from less than 1 l per kilo (BECOLSUB) to 40 l (conventional Colombia), 63 l (Ethiopia 2022) and up to 200 l per kilo in some sources; there is no measured world average.
The date BECOLSUB was developed by Cenicafé and the names of its designers do not appear in the sources consulted here; the figure of 20,000 units comes from a single publication (2022).
The origin of qishr before 1638 rests on Ukers, who reports a practice “around 1200” without a source; La Roque (1732) and Vesling (1638) are the first dated witnesses. The ICO report writes “Ethiopian Qishr” where Ukers and usage place it in Yemen.
The tannin and polyphenol contents of fresh pulp are not given in a uniform way: Feedipedia mentions them without quantifying them, Ukers gives 0.88% caffeine in 1922 and Duangjai et al. 0.69-0.77% in 2016 on arabica.
The anaerobic digestion yields of the pulp (m³ of CH4 per kilo of volatile matter) could not be verified in the full text of Chala et al. (2018), inaccessible at the time of writing.
The current world recycling rate of Nespresso capsules is not published on the sustainability page consulted; the last independent figure is 24.6% (2017), the goal 60% in 2030.
Regulation (EU) 2025/40 sets recyclability grades, but the delegated acts that will define the criteria for capsules had not been adopted at the date of consultation; the exact scope of article 9 for pods depends on the biowaste collections of each Member State.
The figure of “600 billion disposable cups a year” comes from Huskee's commercial site and has not been found in an independent source.

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