Creating coir pith requires more than just physically separating the fiber. Once the coir is freed from the fiber it goes through a maturation process to stabilize the product and this can take up to 6 months. During this process salt, tannins, and phenolic compounds are removed. It is buffered, washed and calcium nitrate is added to displace sodium and balance the pH.
This process requires input chemicals and it produces waste products.
Processing coir requires a significant amount of water and in some areas like India, water is already in short supply. It takes 300 to 600 liters of water to wash one cubic meter of coir pith. The result is polluted water that impacts the environment.
The whole process is very dusty and creates an unhealthy environment. Workers in coir pith factories often work six-day weeks with multiple shifts. We don’t normally think of this as a factor in sustainability, but it is.
A study on this concluded that “coir work induced nasobronchial allergy and pulmonary function abnormalities”. In North America and Europe it would be illegal to work under such conditions.
As coconuts grow they remove nutrients from the soil. If the resulting coir is now shipped overseas it can’t be used as a local organic source to replenish the missing nutrients. The result is that more fertilizer needs to be brought into the plantations to grow coconuts which has an additional environmental impact. Coconut plants are renewable – new trees bear fruit in 6-10 years. But the soil being used for growing them is not renewable if the majority of organic matter is shipped overseas.
Conclusion: Coir is Not Sustainable. Coir requires significant processing that uses input resources and produces waste products. It also posses health risks. Perhaps the most significant long term problem is the depletion of soil nutrients. Coir affects human health and ecosystem quality more than peat. The impacts by coir are due to transportation, electricity consumption, use of calcium nitrate for buffering, land occupation, and production of particulate matter.