The Future of Coffee Grounds with Bio-bean’s George May
Bio-bean is the world’s largest recycler of coffee grounds, turning waste into things like fire logs for domestic wood burners and stoves. It is based in the UK and works with many cafes there to collect their coffee scraps.
If you have an espresso machine at home, you’re aware of how much waste is made from coffee grounds. In this interview, we speak with Bio-bean’s managing director George May.
Tell us about Bio-bean?
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.
Bio-bean was founded in 2013 by architecture student Arthur Kay at University College London. He was tasked with designing a closed-loop coffee shop and noticed the huge volume of spent grounds going to waste. When he noticed the oily sheen on the top of his coffee gone cold, he had the idea that spent coffee could be used as a fuel source. He did some research, hired some experts, and here we are nearly 9 years later (though Kay is no longer involved in the business).
That spark of an idea developed into who we are now – the largest coffee recycling company in the world, with collection streams across the UK, the capacity to process 16,000 tonnes of spent coffee every year, and manufacturing a variety of sustainable, coffee-derived bio-products.
Bio-bean just launched Inficaf: a bulk, raw material for use in third-party product innovations (bioplastics, cosmetics, and automotive friction).
How about you?
I joined bio-bean in 2015, and since then, it’s been an adventurous ride shifting from a start-up mentality to a fully-fledged SME (Small Medium Enterprise), from the launch of our innovative solid fuel products, including our bestselling winter fire logs, Coffee Logs, to building a supply chain that works for UK businesses, and from the launch and initial sales of our coffee flavor extract from spent grounds for the beverage industry, to now working on building partnerships to incorporate our Inficaf (upcycled grounds as a raw material) into a range of industrial bio-based applications.
“We are the largest coffee recycling company in the world, with collection streams across the UK, the capacity to process 16,000 tonnes of spent coffee every year, and manufacturing a variety of sustainable, coffee-derived bio-products.”
What’s something that should be better adopted for sustainability?
It’s important to examine the materials right under our noses – those ‘hidden’ waste streams, like spent coffee, that have long been overlooked. There may be residual value present with potential for big impact in a circular model.
For example, Inficaf can be used in plastics to displace, at this stage, up to 30% of the conventional synthetic or petroleum-based compounds. And we’ve partnered with expert plastics compounders to try and increase that percentage even further. Imagine all the signage, trays, countertops, etc, in a restaurant like McDonald’s being made from their own spent coffee grounds!
What is your business’s impact?
So far, we’ve processed nearly 30,000 tonnes of spent coffee. That’s about 24 Olympic swimming pools full! Through recycling these grounds we’ve saved just under 13,000 tonnes of CO2e, which would take a 16,000-acre forest one year to process.
Our purpose is to create big change that lasts by innovating through coffee waste. The UK drinks 95 million cups of coffee every day, creating an estimated quarter of a million tonnes of wet, waste coffee grounds, often headed for the landfill. When coffee grounds decompose in landfills (just as with other organic waste materials) they emit harmful greenhouse gases, including methane. Instead, we divert grounds to our recycling facility in Cambridgeshire, reducing waste, generating 80% less greenhouse gas emissions, helping to drive behavior change, and contributing to the circular economy.
“Innovations in climate action must be met with a more open, creative, and agile approach in order to create sustained, positive impact.”
We currently process around 8,000 tonnes of spent coffee annually, with the capacity to process up to 16,000 tonnes. We take spent grounds from coffee shops, cafes, restaurants, office blocks, and even universities, airports, and instant coffee manufacturers. We partner with businesses from nationwide coffee chains to independent high street cafes, using the existing waste management and logistics infrastructure to collect the spent grounds; thereby minimizing road miles as much as possible.
Using the recycled grounds, we then manufacture a variety of sustainable products including Inficaf: a bulk, raw material for sustainable product innovations, natural flavor extracts for food and beverage manufacturing, and solid fuels.
Bi0-bean is working on expanding operations and sales in Northern Europe.
What are your challenges?
The biggest challenge we face is behavior change – people and groups in businesses and governments being willing to take steps to change the way things have always been done. As a relatively ‘new kid on the block’, what we do is new and different, and requires often out-of-the-box thinking which can be challenging under tight and inflexible regulations, processes, and budgets. Innovations in climate action must be met with a more open, creative, and agile approach in order to create sustained, positive impact.
Anything interesting you’ve read, listened to, or discovered recently about sustainability?
Perhaps not ground-breaking, but the importance of education.
As a parent to two young children, I am staggered by just how much they have learned already about sustainability – recycling, electric vehicles, wind farms, and so on. It is so easy to engage children and instill in them an understanding of why we need to be focused on sustainability through fun, engaging everyday activities, and this will, hopefully, stand them in good stead as they grow up having to navigate the even greater climate challenges we’re going to face.
Do you have any ideas for how to get more people on board with sustainability?
Start small… one of the easiest things people can do, on an individual level, is to educate themselves about what can and cannot be recycled through their curbside collection and eliminate non-recyclable materials going into their recycling bin.
When non-recyclable materials are included amongst recyclable materials, very often the entire bag or bin gets thrown into general waste. Which materials are accepted varies greatly throughout councils, so it’s best to check with your local council for an accurate list. Often councils will have a pictorial printout you can use for reference.
