Companies recycling spent coffee grounds: a new way to blossom & thrive

With over 35+ years of craftsmanship in printing, Alex White and John Mohr pursue a new standard of sustainability and quality in printing. They established Domestic Stencilworks in California, a company that recycles coffee ground to use as a pigment in printing.

The company intentionally selected its name “Domestic” to demonstrate its commitment to source and manufacture within their home state of California.

The company is very much eco-conscious. First, they eliminate what otherwise would be considered “coffee waste.” Domestic Stencilworks found a way to revitalize spent coffee grounds in printing, thus giving them another way to thrive. Second, Alex and John replace chemicals with bio-friendly materials. They print on a variety of garments with pigments that naturally exist in the world. Instead of using chemicals, the founders believe in the exploration with simple tools and available resources.

In a conversation with Owly Choice, Alex White confessed that the primary idea behind Stencilworks was out of care for the environment. Therefore, he and his partner explored and experimented to combine natural pigments with the waste products.

Spent coffee grounds hit a jackpot. After going through a process of brewing, coffee grounds still have an paralleled amount of pigment.

To fully utilize spent coffee’s benefits, John and Alex established their own collection, upcycling and production processes:

• Collect spent coffee grounds from local coffee shops and roasters.
• Upcycle spent coffee grounds through soaking beans in vinegar.
• Print on garments with recycled coffee grounds.

Though this seems easy at first sight, Alex reassured us that it was actually quite difficult to do. Printing with coffee grounds is a sophisticated process, which requires a lot of expertise and time.

Who may love Domestic Stencilworks?

In our opinion, Domestic Stencilworks may appeal to a large array of shoppers! The t-shirts with custom imprints can make wonderful gifts and souvenirs. They may be particularly appealing to more environmentally conscious shoppers.

• Coffee enthusiasts: if you love coffee like we do, wouldn’t it be fancy to have a nice t-shirt with a coffee imprint on it?
• Coffee shops: many coffee shops send their own spent coffee to Domestic Stencilworks to request customized t-shirts.
• Environmentally conscious shoppers: if you care conscientious shopper, you will surely like what Alex and John have to offer in their assortment. Their t-shirts and other products can make wonderful gifts and souvenirs.

Feel free to check out Domestic Stencilworks and contact Alex and John for more information.

Kaffeeform is a German venture that recycles coffee grounds into artfully crafted coffee cups.

We fell in love with Kaffeeform for multiple reasons, but would like to emphasize Kaffeeform’s 3 strengths that we particularly admire:

• Kaffeeform is an environmentally-friendly company that promotes sustainability and renewable materials.
• Kaffeeform ensures that the people at the beginning of the supply chain receive fair compensation. To that end, Kaffeeform only collects spent coffee beans that originally came from Fair Trade. In fact, many of the coffee shops and coffee roasters that Kaffeeform sources from pay ABOVE fair trade prices so that coffee farmers who plant, harvest and farm coffee beans, receive sustainable wages.
• Kaffeeform empowers people with disabilities through impactful opportunities.

Designed in Berlin, Made in Germany, but… inspiration was born in Italy!

But, how did the idea of transforming spent coffee grounds into coffee cups of a timeless design come about?

Julian, the founder of Kaffeeform, spent parts of his interdisciplinary product design studies in the world’s coffee capital, Italy. As he was enjoying his morning coffee on the historic streets of Bolzano Bozen, he began to wonder: what happens to all the waste, all spent coffee grounds.

With coffee consumption gradually increasing each year, this question never left him. Therefore, he started to experiment with coffee grounds. After 3 years, he found a formula for a new material. This new material was made from coffee grounds and other plant-based renewable materials.

This sustainable material had its first use for the Espresso Cup, which launched in 2015. Thus, the loop was closed: spent coffee could be turned into artfully designed coffee cups to enjoy more coffee.

Thoughtful and sustainable process

To fully utilize spent coffee’s benefits, Kaffeeform collects, recycles and processes grounds all by itself. The company established long-term partnerships with reliable coffee roasters which bring coffee from Fair Trade to ensure fair compensation to farmers.

Independent bike messengers pick up spent coffee grounds and bring to a centralized location in Berlin. At that location, Kaffeeform works with people with disabilities who are responsible for drying and preparing coffee grounds, performing quality control, arranging for logistics and shipments.

The location in Berlin then sends dried coffee grounds to two production sites in Germany. At those manufacturing sites, dried coffee is combined with other components to yield the desired material. That’s also where coffee cups take their shape.

From there, cups are shipped back to Berlin and then to consumers.

Who may love Kaffeeform cups?

Though Kaffeeform currently offers coffee cups, the team is actively pursuing new applications of the recycled coffee grounds. The company is exploring lifestyle accessories, furniture and more. All to inspire people to re-think what materials are used in their day-to-day objects.

In our opinion, Kaffeeform may appeal to many, many shoppers around Europe! These timeless and beautifully designed coffee cups can make wonderful gifts and souvenirs. They may be particularly appealing to more environmentally conscious shoppers.

We feel that the following groups may find Kaffeeform cups particularly appealing:

• Local coffee shops: We are not sure if this happens right now. However, coffee shops may ask Kaffeeform to produce custom cups with imprints. How could would it be for a coffee shop to offer coffee in cups made from their own coffee grounds?!
• Coffee lovers who aspire to integrate sustainability into every day decisions.
• Environmentally conscious shoppers. Instead of depleting new resources, Kaffeeform’s cups reuse coffee grounds, which already exist.

We really like Kaffeeform. The organization offers options and inspire people to integrate sustainability into their everyday lives and make conscious consumer decisions. Kaffeeform promotes reusing products and raw materials. It is better to opt for multi-use than throwaway products, because every decision has consequences.

Kaffeeform turns waste into a valued resource: every day objects. Durable and loyal companions to enjoy day after day, month after month.

Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, Kaffe Bueno has been revolutionizing the market of unlocking coffee’s health potential. The company has discovered ways of upcycling coffee to use in cosmetics, nutraceuticals and functional foods.

We find Kaffe Bueno extremely impressive. The company turns used coffee grounds into an ingredient for many products within health, skincare, and foods.

In addition to eco-consciousness, Kaffe Bueno wants to ensure sustainability in the supply chain for coffee. They request full traceability for coffee beans, to ensure that coffee producers who plant, harvest and farm coffee beans, receive sustainable wages.

Though Kaffe Bueno serves mostly B2B customers at this time, we felt very strongly about including the company on our list, given the impressive results.

Why recycling coffee grounds into something else?

We love Kaffe Bueno because they combine science and spent coffee grounds to find more sustainable and environmentally friendly ways to manufacture new products.

How did the idea of upcycling coffee grounds came about? In a conversation with Owly Choice, Kaffe Bueno admitted “we are hugely passionate about making sustainability an indispensable part of coffee. We need to find more sustainable and circular solutions.”

The need for sustainable and circular solutions is backed up by the numbers:

• Coffee consumption leads to about 18 billion pounds (9 billion kilograms) of spent coffee annually. In the vast majority of cases, this spent coffee is completely wasted.
• Coffee contains a lot of health-benefiting compoundss such as anti-oxidants and fatty acids. When we brew coffee, we use only 1% of these compounds. When we dispose of coffee grounds into trash, we throw out 99% of those good benefits out.

Therefore, Kaffe Bueno wants to change this wasteful disposal by inserting coffee into circular economy, by extending coffee’s lifecycle and utilizing all of its health potentials.

What creative products can spent coffee grounds be turned into?

The list of products that Kaffe Bueno came up with is impressive. Here are some of the ones we love:

• Kafflour®: an unpcycled gluten-free flour from spent coffee grounds. It is caffeine-free, low in fats, rich in proteins, and makes AMAZING pancakes.
• Kaffibre®: a proprietary upcycled cosmetic material from coffee grounds. It works wonderfully for face and body care, as exfoliating masks, cleansing gels, lip balms, peeling masks, scrubs, cellulite treatment, scrubs and moisturizing wash-off creams.
• Kaffe Bueno Oil®: though also used in cosmetics, the oil is its own category since it finds significantly more uses. Kaffe Bueno Oil can serve well in sun care, ageing treatments, wound-healing and anti-cellulite formulations.

UpCircle Beauty first started out at the London Coffee Festival in April 2016 with a line of natural and sustainable body scrubs made with repurposed Arabica coffee grounds. The initial line included three different types: lemongrass and peppermint, clove and cinnamon, and lemon and black pepper.

Anna Brightman, the co-founder of UpCircle Beauty, recalled that the idea behind the organization had sprung up organically. Anna’s brother, Will, also a co-founder, asked his local coffee shop what they did with the coffee waste. He was shocked to hear that they were producing so much that they had to pay the council to have it removed and disposed of on landfill sites.

Will decided it was a great starting point for a business idea, but wasn’t sure how to best proceed. That’s where Anna stepped in. Throughout her teenage years she wanted to be a makeup artist, so she always had a keen interest in beauty and skincare.

Anna knew that coffee had loads of great skincare benefits, so that was the lightbulb moment! Why not repurpose spent coffee into sustainable circular skincare products?

The mission to leave the world better than we found it

While we love that UpCircle upcycles spent coffee grounds to use in skin care products, we were particularly impressed with the organization’s mission statement.  Anna said,

We want to leave the world better than we found it, that’s why every UpCircle product is made from a core ingredient, which would otherwise have been discarded.

The brand name encapsulates the core purpose: sustainability and promoting the power of the circular economy. When coffee grounds are sent to landfill they rot to produce methane, a greenhouse gas.

UpCircle has rescued over 250 tonnes (500k pounds) of coffee from this fate. Based on the organization’s growth rates, Anna estimates they will have saved an additional 1,000 tonnes (2M pounds) in the next 5 years.

Since 1/3 of all food produced is wasted, UpCircle Beauty wants to do better things with it than to simply discard in a landfill. Food ingredients can have powerful effects on the body – inside and out – so there’s an opportunity to create beauty products from food ingredients that’re being discarded yet still have much to offer the skin.

Who may enjoy UpCircle Beauty products?

UpCircle is among the unique companies recycling coffee grounds and turning them into AWESOME and USEFUL products. The circular element of the brand has found a wide appeal among many groups of shoppers.

UpCircle products can make terrific gifts. However, they are brilliant for an everyday use, in lieu of some of the other skin care products filled with chemicals and manufactured materials.

• Environmentally conscious shoppers who value natural products. Lots of skincare brands can claim to be vegan, natural, cruelty-free, etc. However, UpCircle goes a step further. Their products have saved hundreds of tonnes of valuable skin-loving ingredients from ending up in landfill.
• Affordable products for high quality skin care products. Ethical, sustainable, fair trade, organic ingredients cost more and it is also costly to produce handmade products. UpCircle commits to all of these things whilst remaining determined to create a brand whose sustainable products are accessible to all. UpCircle does not want the price point to be a barrier towards making sustainable choices or supporting a sustainable brand.

If we can provide competitively priced, high performing products from upcycled ingredients then we are demonstrating that the beauty industry can become a lot less wasteful. That is our core motivation.

decafé is among our favorite companies, which turns spent coffee grounds into tastefully designed lamps, lighting and accessories for the interior.

Raúl Laurí, the owner and founder of decafé, always dreamed of crafting his designs from sustainable materials.

As he was quietly cleaning the Moka Pot one Sunday morning in 2009, Raúl became enamored with the beauty of used coffee grounds. That coffee preserved almost all of its properties such as color, texture, and aroma.

Raúl had a lightbulb moment. That coffee must have preserved some of its value after passing through a flow of hot water for a couple of seconds.

As a product designer, he was able to turn those spent coffee grounds into products of tasteful design. After numerous tests, Raúl obtained a sample with a very beautiful texture and tonality. From there, he pursued a material that would express many aspects of coffee, its texture, aroma and tonality.

Natural recycling to preserve environment and resources

Raúl shared that decafé aims to promote natural beauty and sustainability. Therefore, the recycling process also needs to comply with principles of sustainability.

decafé collects and processes spent coffee grounds. The company recycles coffee from two sources: coffee grounds from coffee shops, and coffee recycled from coffee capsules (coffee pods).

Once collected, decafé dries coffee in the open air with natural resources, without energy consumption. After they are dry, decafé is ready to prepare the 100% natural formula.

Who may enjoy decafé products?

decafé has a wide assortment of wonderful products. Art-, design- and coffee-loving public may find decafé’s selection particularly appealing. The products may be of special interest to individuals with sensitivity for sustainability and authentic natural materials.

We know that restaurants, cafes, hotels and shops may also enjoy some of the mood lighting and accessories.

decafé’s collection includes but is not limited to the following:

• Floor lamps
• Table lamps
• Desk lamps
• Ceiling lights
• Accessories (such as centerpieces, candle holders, wall mirrors and hangers)

Though the company is located in Spain, decafé has made shipments and projects around the world, e.g. in Australia. At the time of writing, decafé works on expanding the production capacity. They hope that they will soon be able to distribute the collection and products for interior design worldwide.

Some companies recycle coffee grounds for a limited number of products. They typically specialize in one specific domain such as cosmetics, accessories, decor or fabrics.

However, bio-bean goes a step further to recycle spent coffee grounds on an industrial scale. The organization transforms used coffee grounds into a variety of awesome bio-products.

Jessica Folkerts, the Marketing Manager at bio-bean, stated in a conversation with Owly Choice that one of the goals is to “reduce waste to landfill, save on greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to the circular economy.”

bio-bean accomplishes this on a large scale, and continually innovates their offering. While bio-bean offers products mostly in a B2B formula, we felt it was important to bring up bio-bean in the conversation on companies that recycle spent coffee grounds.

UK residents drink 95 million cups of coffee each day

bio-bean estimates that the UK drinks about 95 million cups of coffee every day, creating an estimated 500k tonnes (1M pounds) of waste coffee grounds every year. Most of those coffee grounds end up in landfills across the country, where they emit methane, a harmful greenhouse gas and a major contributor to climate change.

However, this is where bio-bean steps in. The organization diverts spent grounds from landfill and instead recycles them into other products. By doing so, they save 80% on Co2e emissions (carbon dioxide equivalent emissions).

As soon as we started researching and communicating with bio-bean, it immediately became apparent. The organization is all about long-lasting big-scale positive impact on the environment and sustainability.

Kinds of products that bio-bean creates

bio-bean recycles coffee grounds into a variety of products on an industrial scale. Therefore, you may not be able to purchase any of them on the bio-bean’s website. However, you will likely find some of the products at bio-bean’s partners.

• Coffee Logs: a consumer retail brand of fire logs for wood burners and stoves. If you are interested in bio-bean’s products, Coffee Logs are sold through third-party retailers in the UK, such as DIY stores, supermarkets and garden centers.
• Coffee biomass pellets: alternative fuel for industrial/commercial scale biomass boilers.
• Natural coffee flavor ingredients for application in food and beverage manufacturing.
• Dried coffee grounds as a raw material for other product innovations such as bioplastics.

You can also contact bio-bean directly for information on other products or the recycling service.

Owly’s wisdom: upcycling grounds for more sustainable future

Coffee grounds are essential for a delicious cup of coffee. However, we use only a small portion of coffee’s potential when we brew it.

In addition, to limit the devastating impact on nature, businesses recycle coffee grounds, and conscious coffee lovers actively decide to dry and store coffee grounds to use coffee’s benefits for other purposes (e.g. to grow beautiful plants the garden or to remove nasty odors).

When we enter coffee beans in a circular economy, we are able to use coffee’s full potential. We are able to re-use what would otherwise end up in a landfill, and limit the use of other resources on the planet.

Do you think companies should recycle coffee grounds? Should we use spent coffee grounds in other products? What is your favorite product made of upcycled coffee grounds?

Let us know in the comment section below!