A team of researchers from Brazil’s Federal Technological University of Paraná suggests that spent coffee grounds could one day be used to help clean up environmental toxins.

Spent coffee grounds, which can reportedly be damaging to wildlife and the environment when landfilled, can be repurposed to function as an adsorbent of bentazone, which is a highly neurotoxic herbicide used in the agriculture industry.

The team of researchers determined that when they used zinc chloride to activate the carbon found in spent coffee grounds, the activated carbon demonstrated roughly 70% efficiency in the removal of bentazone.

Further, the team reported that the activated carbon was also efficient in a high-sensitivity test for pollutants present in water.

The team’s findings are detailed in the article “Removal Of Bentazone Using Activated Carbon From Spent Coffee Grounds,” which appears in the Journal of Chemical Technology & Biotechnology.