The coffee giant Caffè Nero has teamed up with cleantech company bio-bean and the recycling firm First Mile to turn coffee waste into a renewable fuel.
The recycling scheme was formally announced late last week but has in fact been running since July 2016, reported businessGreen. First Mile picks up the coffee waste from 122 of Caffè Nero’s London stores and takes it directly to bio-bean’s factory in Cambridgeshire to transform it into biomass fuel for boilers and woodburners.
By July 2017 – a year into the recycling scheme – Caffè Nero calculates it will have converted 218 tonnes of used coffee grounds into 98 tonnes of biomass pellets, enough to heat 425 homes for one year.
“We are always looking at ways to improve our recycling so we are very excited to be working with First Mile and bio-bean on this initiative and will seek to extend it beyond Greater London,” said Matt Spencer, commercial director at Caffè Nero. “We are committed to doing our bit to help address the recycling issues we all face today.”
According to the article, the partnership with First Mile allows the waste to be transported directly to bio-bean rather than via an intermediary depot, helping to avoid 125,000 road miles during the first year of the scheme.
Back in December, Costa Coffee announced that bio-bean now receives coffee waste from 850 of its cafes nationwide, amounting to 3,000 tonnes of waste coffee grounds annually.
In addition to producing ‘coffee logs’ for woodburners and biomass pellets for biomass boilers, bio-bean is now developing a system to convert the oils from coffee waste into biodiesel for vehicles. One tonne of waste coffee grounds can reportedly create 245 litres of biodiesel, or enough to fill four cars.
Image credit: © bio-bean limited
