Each year, during the harvest season, coffee producers are faced with tonnes of raw waste in the form of coffee husk. After a coffee cherry is picked, it’s fermented to develop flavour and loosen the fruity flesh surrounding the seed, or bean. Once the desired amount of time has passed, it’s then dried and milled. It’s during the milling stage of coffee production that you get husk, the last (second last if you count silver skin) remaining layer before the precious green bean.
The husk in these cups is sourced from Yunnan Coffee Traders (YCT) in rural Southwest China. Before Huskee and, like many coffee farms around the world, YCT used the husk as a fertiliser buffer or a fuel source – albeit not a very efficient one. Leftover husk was then left to pile up, posing not only a fire risk but also a pest problem. Now, working together with Huskee allows Yunnan Coffee Traders to sustainably dispose of their milled coffee husk, which is collected, transported and repurposed at the Huskee manufacturing facility in China.