Bio-bean, a London-based enterprise, takes coffee grinds and turns them into fuel.
Arthur Kay trained in architecture at University College London. While developing a blueprint for a coffee roaster he saw the potential in turning the business' waste into energy.
Given London produces 200,000 tons of coffee grinds each year, Kay had no shortage of waste to tap into to produce an alternative fuel. Bio-bean takes those coffee grinds to a facility in North London where they're pressed through a machine for their oil. That oil can then be turned into pellets for heating buildings or kept as a liquid for powering buses.
This idea earned Kay the Mayor's Low Carbon Prize and funding to start a business based on the biofuel. Boris Johnson commended Kay for his ingenuity with a cheeky remark: "This kind of innovation is brilliant to see- we are 100% behind bio-bean, which is full of beans."
Kay partnered with fellow architect from UCL, Benjamin Harriman to launch bio-bean as a full-fledged enterprise in 2012. The company now uses its biofuel to run its own fleet of trucks, eliminating its carbon footprint as it circles the city to collect waste.
Bio-bean estimates that they save up to 53,200 barrels of oil in a year, the equivalent of driving a London bus around the world more than 7,000 times.
The company has won a series of awards since then, including support from Shell Foundation, which has been investing in green-energy entrepreneurs like Kay.
Bio-bean is part of a growing trend of enterprises focused on creating a circular economy, where the end of a product can be recycle into a new product.
