Green energy from coffee grounds wins firm prestigious prize

You know you’re on to a good business idea when you get your raw materials free! An innovative green technology company called bio-bean® has picked up the Mayor of London’s inaugural Low Carbon Entrepreneur Award for their idea of collecting waste coffee grounds from London cafés and train stations and turning them into a carbon-neutral biofuel that they now use to heat 15,000 homes.

Their new factory, where the grounds are processed, can take 50,000 tonnes of waste coffee annually – the equivalent of one in 10 cups of coffee consumed in the UK – and each tonne they process reduces CO₂ emissions by up to 6.8 tonnes, thanks to the fossil fuels their bean products are replacing.

In the near future, bio-bean® also intends to start making biodiesel, as a replacement for carbon-intensive fossil diesel.

While the coffee-ground feedstock promises to be a near-endless source of fuel, bio-bean® is yet to tackle the tricky issue of getting a decent coffee in the UK…

Read more about bio-bean® here: www.bio-bean.com