In today’s odds and ends, we find out how to keep your coffee off your keyboard, what happens when you give mushrooms coffee, and how Green Mountain is giving back.

We’ve all done this. You’re sitting at your desk with a nice, hot mug of freshly poured coffee sitting next to you. The phone rings. You reach over to grab it and bump the coffee on your way. Your precious mug goes end over end, soaking your keyboard and possibly important documents on its way. Panic ensues.

Someone in New Zealand has come up with a solution for this problem. It’s called the Adkaf and it’s a small, plastic mold that securely holds a coffee mug wherever you place it. Disaster averted! I couldn’t find much information on Adovationz’s, the company behind Adkaf, site about how it works, but I’m assuming that it’s weighted.

They don’t appear to yet be available in the US, but you can contact the company to order one or even have yours emblazoned with your company’s logo.

Shrooms on coffee

The ZERI Foundation was recognized at this weekend’s Specialty Coffee Association of America Exposition in Atlanta for their efforts to help turn coffee waste into an environmentally friendly fertilizer.

ZERI, which stands for Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives, has been helping coffee farmers in Colombia re-use their coffee waste since 1994. The waste is applied to shiitake mushrooms and reportedly helps them grow three times faster than normal. Guess it has the same effect on mushrooms that it does on humans.

Any waste left from the mushrooms is used as animal feed. ZERI says the program has helped to create 100,000 jobs in both Colombia and Africa. It hopes to spread its message to the remainder of the world’s 25 million coffee farms.

Down from the Mountain

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is also doing its part to give back to the planet this Earth Week. The roaster challenged visitors to its JustMeans.com website to find potential solutions to climate change and the winners were announced yesterday.

According to CSRwire.com, more than 100 nonprofit groups entered the competition to find answers to four specific segments of climate change: threats to coffee-growing communities, transportation emissions, building political will, and empowering individual action. Each winner will receive a five-year grant equal to $200,000.

The International Center for Agriculture and Catholic Relief Services took home the prize for solutions to problems threatening coffee-growing regions. They plan to use the grant to map the impact of climate change on coffee plants and assist smallholder coffee farmers in identifying, evaluating, and implementing efforts to adapt.

“Working to protect the environment is one of our core company values,” says Michael Dupee, Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. “Long-term solutions to climate change will come from the combined efforts of all of us-nonprofits, for-profits, the government, and individuals. We’re very excited by the potential these organizations and projects have to create positive change on this issue globally, as well as in our own operations.”

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