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Finding New Life for Cacao Byproducts

With recipes for cacao waste chicha, sorbet & syrup from Ecuador’s Alejandra Espinoza.

Nicholas Gill
Mar 18, 2024
∙ Paid
Open cacao pods at harvest in Quillabamba, Peru. Photo: Nicholas Gill.

On average, more than 70 percent of the cacao plant is wasted at its origins. With the global trade in cacao estimated at roughly $1 trillion dollars, that’s far from an insignificant amount of waste. While the seeds, or beans, are used in the chocolate making process, the rest of th…

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