bio-bean: harnessing the power of spent coffee grounds to safeguard our planet

In the UK, we are HUGE coffee lovers and drink a whopping 98 million cups daily. Like every caffeine high, there is a downside. Our collective habit results in an estimated 250,000 tonnes of wet, waste coffee grounds every year.

Why is this a problem?
Coffee is a labour-intensive crop to grow and must be transported to the UK from across the globe, which requires a huge amount of energy. But don’t worry, bio-bean, a British startup who we work with, is saving the future of coffee. The Recorra team recently visited recycling partner, bio-bean, in Cambridgeshire. bio-bean is the world’s largest recycler of coffee grounds, and a Certified B-Corporation.

Recorra delivers spent coffee grounds from our clients to their site, to give new life to a material previously considered waste. bio-bean manufactures sustainable products from spent coffee grounds for a range of markets, both consumer and industrial, saving businesses money, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and contributing to the circular economy.

The company uses innovative technology to turn used coffee grounds into a variety of products, including their innovative raw material, Inficaf, commercial-scale heating pellets, a natural flavour ingredient for the food industry, and bio-bean's consumer home heating product, Coffee Logs. 

Starting off as a niche operation in 2013, their site has grown in size and sophistication since we last visited in 2018. What’s more, they’ve invested in substantial infrastructure which powers the site in an efficient and modern way. ‘There was no blueprint’, comments bio-bean's Managing Director, George May; this isn’t a method of repurposing coffee that is widely done, and the grounds are notoriously sticky and difficult to work with.

Through their research and development team on-site, bio-bean has developed coffee flavours and exfoliant ingredients for use in the food & beverage and cosmetics industries alike.

The scale of the operation is impressive, with around 8,000 tonnes of spent coffee grounds processed each year. They work with waste management services like Recorra, as well as instant coffee manufacturers and directly with larger businesses (like coffee shop chains). There’s still so much energy stored in coffee grounds and with bio-bean's help, it can have an impactful second life.

Since its inception in 2013, bio-bean has recycled nearly 40,000 tonnes of spent coffee grounds, saving approx. 9,000 tonnes of CO2e. This amount of CO2e would have needed nearly 408,500 trees (a 743-acre forest) to process.

With the cost-of-living crisis and subsequent fuel hikes, finding creative solutions with waste materials has never been so important in both domestic and industrial settings.

How to correctly recycle your coffee grounds?
In a business setting, we suggest you separate coffee grounds from food waste. Whilst in small amounts it isn’t actively harmful to the anaerobic digestion (AD) process that’s used to break down the organic matter, in larger amounts it can be toxic to digesters, sabotaging the production of biogas. By separately dealing with coffee, bio-bean produces a 130% greater carbon saving compared to AD.

In a home setting, your coffee grounds can be included in your compost or you can use it on plant beds outside or even as a body scrub.

Need our help?
If you are a business which produces coffee, either in the office or a hospitality setting like restaurants and coffee shops, then we really recommend having a separate coffee recycling stream. Contact us here to set one up today.