Circular Life
Natural Economy

The Circ​ular Life of Coffee Grounds and Plastic Bottles

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Recognizing the Problem with Recycling Used Coffee Grounds (motivation)

We noticed recycling used coffee grounds is important as every coffee shop wastes around 10 kg of coffee ground waste daily. Therefore, we wanted to investigate how coffee grounds can be recycled or reused. In 2021, bio-bean (the biggest recycling factory in the world) recycled about 6400 tons of used coffee grounds, which also decreased 2700 tons of secondary carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, we hope this research can help to raise awareness of the importance of the circular economy, bringing more people to the idea of a sustainable world.

Research Motivation

Significance

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effects

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The Significance of Used Coffee Grounds 

These are about 6 million tons of coffee grounds! Whether or not these coffee grounds can be "reused" is the CEO of sky room Arthur Kay's goal. A large amount of greenhouse gasses would be produced during the decomposition process, which would exacerbate global warming. Since coffee itself has a lot of fat, Arthur thinks it can be used as fuel. Arthur's idea was to use coffee grounds to replace wood, the first product they developed was named "Coffee Logs". Burning Coffee Logs can provide more heat and burning time compared to ordinary wood. While still producing greenhouse gasses, no more trees need to be cut down. He had an idea, slightly changed from the Coffee Logs, and started to produce the pellet fuel used by these boilers: Coffee Pellets. Coffee Pellets could free factories from burning fossil fuels and reduce their contribution to global warming. Like Coffee Logs, Coffee Pellets generate more energy than other wood pellet fuels. Turn these coffee aromas into natural flavorings that can again be used as food or drink additions. In addition, he notices that more and more companies and industries are using the coffee ground for manufacturing processes. For example, glass frames and cups are made of coffee grounds. Many 3D printing manufacturers have even begun promoting coffee grounds as materials for 3D printing. Overall, the use of coffee grounds is in fact much more than we originally thought, it can be assumed that the secondary use of coffee grounds will be increased in the near future. 

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Effects of Recycling Coffee Grounds on Reducing Waste

While drinking coffee, we only extract 0.2 percent of the oil in 1 coffee bean, the other 99.8 percent was thrown away. Committed to reusing 99.8% of coffee grounds, coffee yarn was successfully produced in 2009 and gained international patent protection. The circular economy has been fully integrated, regardless of the technology, concept, and sustainable value of 100% recyclable S.Café® products. Leading up to being turned into fibers, coffee grounds must be purified because they contain oil that is not dry enough. During the research and development process, it was discovered that the fibers produced are not only coffee-colored and that coffee grounds can combine with human body odor to create new scents. S.Café® can reduce 2.7 kg of carbon dioxide emissions. 1,200 tons of coffee grounds have already been converted into resources, with 10 tons of coffee grounds being converted into resources on average each month. Therefore, the reuse of coffee grounds had led to a series of positive effects on our environment such as reducing greenhouse gasses.