COULD YOU BE CUCKOO FOR COCOA-COAL?

For decades, the team of confectionary geniuses at Reese’s have successfully seduced the taste buds of legions of Americans thanks to the simple yet divine pairing of chocolate and peanut butter. While many consider the two ingredients soul mates, in today’s brave new green world, Lindt USA is gambling on an altogether different “taste sensation” to knock our socks off and shrink our carbon footprint in the process. Think chocolate and coal.

Before pondering the long list of more appealingly exotic chocolate pairings that you may have sampled by any one of Lindt’s countless competitors (Vosges and Theo’s instantly come to mind) -- and before you question how on earth coal-studded chocolate could possibly be yummy – what you need to know is that the combo Lindt is testing could potentially become a viable and infinitely greener fuel source for the masses. Nope, it’s not for eatin’...only for burnin’.

Lindt USA plans to produce cocoa confections in their Stratham, New Hampshire facility before the end of 2009, which means that they will process vast quantities of raw cocoa beans on site. Unlike so many of their American-based competitors, they will become one of the very few chocolate manufacturers to employ a raw material to final product process – Theo Chocolate is a rare exception.

In an effort to analyze how to best utilize the cocoa bean husk, which is traditionally considered waste in the industry, Lindt challenged a team of scientists to unearth any and all of its constructive applications. While the husks have been used for years as gardening mulch, their distinctive cocoa aroma makes it an irresistible snack for hungry dogs and that has resulted in countless instances of theobromine poisoning (quite like a caffeine overdose).

Far more beneficial opportunities for the by-product exist, such as potentially using it as an alternative to traditional food pectin, tapping into its restorative antioxidant compounds, utilizing it as a viable source of dietary fiber and most notably, using the shells as an alternate fuel source. The latter study is well underway in light of the recent collaboration between Lindt USA and the Public Service of New Hampshire’s (PSNH) Schiller Station in Portsmouth.

Just a few days ago, Lindt augmented 33 parts of PSNH’s coal with one part of cocoa bean hulls, and by launching a test burn to generate electricity, they are now analyzing whether the by-product of the chocolate industry could actually become a viable green fuel source in the near future. They’ve acknowledged that the relatively small volume of cocoa shells is not likely to make a significant impact at this point in time, but they plan to continue tweaking the ratio in order to most effectively utilize the resource in the near future.

Who knows...we might be well on our way to a coal-free, fossil-fuel-free power source! Lindt fully anticipates producing cocoa bean shell bio-mass on a weekly basis once their USA facility is up-and-running, which lends credence to the concept of taking a step in the right direction rather than no step at all. Something about torched cocoa hulls powering our homes makes me say yeeee-haaaaa!