Roadchef, the UK’s leading motorway service operator, has partnered with bio-bean – the first ever business to recycle waste coffee grounds into biofuel on an industrial scale – to reduce its environmental impact.
As a nation, the UK drinks 55 million cups of coffee every day, creating 500,000 tonnes of waste coffee grounds every year, most of which is disposed of via landfill. This is not only a costly form of waste disposal for businesses due to the UK government’s landfill tax but is also damaging the environment due to the emission of greenhouse gases.
Used coffee grounds are collected from 28 Roadchef sites by Olleco, a resource recovery company, which transports the grounds to bio-bean’s factory in Cambridgeshire. Here they are cleaned, dried and recycled into useful products for industry and homes, including pellets for heating and Coffee Logs for woodburners in homes.
Roadchef welcomes more than 50 million motorists through the doors of its motorway service areas around the country every year, and estimates that about 7 million cups of coffee are drunk at its sites each year.
Roadchef and bio-bean estimate that over 200 tonnes of waste coffee grounds will be collected from Roadchef sites by the end of 2018 by Olleco. Recycling these grounds will save 112 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions compared to disposing of them to landfill.
Simon Turl, CEO of Roadchef, commented “At Roadchef we are very proud to have partnered with bio-bean on an initiative that benefits the environment. Since working with bio-bean we have already seen financial savings due to a reduction in our waste weight and we look forward to a long and prosperous partnership.”
George May, Chief Commercial Officer at bio-bean, said “It’s fantastic to be able to recycle coffee grounds from one of the UK’s largest motorway services through Olleco’s innovative collection service. This partnership reduces emissions by diverting coffee grounds away from landfill, and Roadchef have even gone one step further by stocking our Coffee Logs at their sites. It’s a circular system we’re proud to be a part of.”
Gavin Millar, Sales Director at Olleco, said “We are pleased to be able to help Roadchef convert their waste coffee grounds, used cooking oil and waste food into renewable energy.”
