Here at the Wholesale Coffee Company, we’re very conscious of our environmental footprint and are always looking at ways to minimise it. That’s why we were interested to hear about bio-bean, a UK start up company who’s turning used coffee grounds into fuel.
In the UK alone, we produce around 500,000 tonnes of used coffee grounds every year. Only a very tiny proportion is currently recycled, mostly as garden fertiliser. When coffee grounds are sent to landfill, in common with other organic waste they emit methane, a greenhouse gas.
Four years ago, Arthur Kay set up bio-bean with the aim of minimising the UK’s coffee waste. They’ve now got a recycling centre in Cambridgeshire, where grounds from across the UK are transported into new energy sources as biofuel. The new ‘coffee logs’, each one made from the grounds of 25 cups of coffee, burn around 20% longer than wood as they have a higher calorific value. Bio-bean have launched ranges both for industry and for the domestic market.
If you’re keen to get your hands on some ‘coffee logs’, suitable for woodburning stoves and chimeras, then they’re available from retailers including Amazon, Ocado and Morrisons for £9.99 for a bag of 16. Coffee shops big and small have been joining in and sending their grounds in for re-use, and bio-bean promise that they’re transporting it as economically as they can using waste management companies. They’ve also partnered with companies such as Network Rail, so the remains of your early morning latte are now likely to go into the programme. Plans for the future include developing a liquid bio-fuel that could even be used to power London’s iconic red buses.
Here at the Wholesale Coffee Company, we supply the finest coffee for your commercial coffee business, including beans and ground coffee, all available at great wholesale prices online. You can find out more by taking a look at our main website, www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk.