London’s Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and its caterer CH&CO, have partnered with bio-bean, a recycler of spent coffee grounds, to transform their 3,500kg of waste coffee grounds a year into sustainable bio-products.
The venue’s coffee grounds, which formerly went into the RCP’s food waste and were processed by anaerobic digestion into compost, will now be recycled into eco-friendly fire logs.
This will save 70% of the CO2e emissions instead of the grounds undergoing anaerobic digestion.
Recycling waste coffee grounds into coffee logs will save on emissions and harness the energy contained in the grounds, to transform them into a useful product. Spent coffee grounds have a naturally high oil content and a high calorific value, which makes them an ideal energy source.
Before being compressed into compact logs, the waste grounds will go through an engineered drying process that ensures the moisture content of each log is 10% for burning.
This allows the coffee logs to burn 20% hotter and longer than kiln-dried wood. Each log will be made from the grounds of 25 cups of coffee and will be used in RCP Meeting & Events’ pizza ovens.
Natacha Allen, head of commercial events, RCP Meetings & Events’, said: “Sustainability is a key part of our everyday operations across all areas of the business, including catering, waste management, energy and with the suppliers and service partners we work with.
“We are really proud to have reduced our total carbon footprint by 30% over the past three years and are committed to reducing our environmental impact even further across all our operations. Working with bio-bean on such an interesting project is further testament to these efforts.”
