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The Startup Upcycling Coffee Grounds For The Climate

October 13, 2023
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The Startup Upcycling Coffee Grounds For The Climate
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A new approach to coffee grounds might be capable of doing a lot of good for the climate.

What’s happening:

  • Danish startup Kaffe Bueno has launched the world’s first coffee biorefinery facility which aims to convert coffee byproducts into valuable compounds
  • The new facility was supported with a €2.5M grant from the European Innovation Council

How it works:

  • Coffee grounds are filled with fatty acids, proteins, antioxidants and many healthy compounds
  • Through chemistry and nanotechnology Kaffe breaks down coffee into its molecular components
  • Those molecular components can then be up cycled into active ingredients for purposes such as soil and crop health, nutraceuticals and even gut health for animals

Why it matters:

  • Upcycling coffee into potentially valuable inputs for other products could play a role in transforming the paradigm that used coffee beans are simply waste

By the numbers:

  • The new biorefinery facility in Copenhagen will have the potential to upcycle 500 tonnes of ground coffee annually
  • Over time Kaffe believes they can increase that capacity to 1,500 tonnes per year

The intrigue:

  • Kaffe Bueno has a partnership with 7-Eleven Denmark for protein rich pastries that use their proprietary upcycled ingredient from coffee by products known as ‘KAFFIBRE’


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