The Challenge

Many people around the world start their day with a cup of coffee. From Oct 2021 to Sep 2022, over 168.5 million 60kg bags of coffee were consumed globally, with Europe accounting for 31% of its consumption (International Coffee Organization, 2023).

Every year, approximately 18 million tonnes of used coffee grounds are discarded worldwide, with the majority being sent to landfill (May, 2021).

When coffee grounds decompose in landfills, they emit methane gas, which has a greenhouse heating effect 84 times higher than carbon dioxide (over a 20 year period).

‘If all the estimated 18 million tonnes of wet, spent grounds were left to decompose naturally, they would release over 2.3 billion cubic metres of methane annually – a global warming impact equivalent to the entire annual CO2 output of France’ (May, 2021).

The Circular Opportunity

A circular economy is an economy that eliminates waste by design. It does this, in part, by recognising the value contained in what is normally throw away.

‘When brewing a cup of coffee, only 1% of the potential in the coffee bean is being utilised, making it one of the most undervalued resources in the world’ (Kaffe Bueno 2023).

Spent coffee grounds are already being used for biofuels, natural fertilisers, nutrition and personal healthcare products.

The Circular Solution in Practice

Kaffe Bueno is a Danish bioscience company founded in 2016. They are a Certified B Corporation who use green chemistry and biotechnology to upcycle spent coffee grounds to produce ingredients for the human-nutrition, personal-care and agro-chemical industries.

Kaffe Bueno collects and dries the spent coffee grounds from selected hotels, offices, and industry partners in Copenhagen. They then extract the antioxidant-rich arabica seed oil and coffee fibres.

Their circular business model has resulted in a number of marketable healthcare products, such as extracts for serums, oils, shampoos, conditioners, soaps, sunscreens, natural exfoliants and antioxidants. For the nutrition market they produce fibre rich flour for baking breads, cookies and cereals plus coffee flavouring extracts.

By diverting spent coffee grounds from landfill they currently prevent up to

37 tonnes of methane emissions per year (Kallehauge, 2023).

Replicability

The global coffee beauty products market was valued at US$593 million in 2022, and it is projected to grow to US$961.9 million by 2031 (Transparency Market Research, 2023). Consumers are becoming more conscious of the ingredients in skincare products. In addition, the increasing demand for organic and natural skincare products is enhancing the market value for beauty products containing coffee.

Some of the prominent players in the market such as Loreal Paris, Estee Lauder Inc., and Avon have been focusing on introducing coffee-infused beauty products to expand their offerings and serve the customers with natural ingredient-based solutions (Grand View Research, 2019).

Nutrient recovery from food waste and residues has been applied in many cases and for different purposes.

Considering coffee waste valorisation, some examples also worth mentioning include:

• UpCircle is a circular skincare company that use coffee grounds to make facial scrubs amongst other upcycled ingredients from the food industry.

  
  

• The Coffee Cherry Co developed an extraction process for coffee cherry pulp to provide an ingredient for flours and nutrition drinks.

A Note on By-Products & End of Waste

A by-product is a residue left over from the production of another product. In Ireland, Regulation 27 of the Waste Directive sets out the circumstances in which a material can be considered a by-product and not a waste. It is essential you notify the EPA to determine if your material satisfies the criteria of a by-product. The EPA will confirm if it can be catogorised as a by-product or if it must be categorised as a waste. If the substance is classified as a waste then it may need to achieve End-of-Waste status via Article 28 of the Waste Directive to be kept in use as a resource.