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When we first heard about bio-bean, we thought it was too good to be true. Really? Use old coffee grinds to make a woodburning log? What a great idea!
bio-bean are a relatively new company, still only three and a bit years old. They make various sustainable and innovative products from waste coffee grinds including bio fuel, Coffee Logs, and a coffee oil suitable for use in cooking (needless to say we’ve been busy in the kitchen with this), all from roasted coffee beans. This environmental kindness chimes well with our own ‘Bee Green’ programme here at Honeybuns where we recycle & compost.
bio-bean work with waste management companies to collect and transport the ground coffee waste from businesses, large and small, to their pioneering and innovative factory in Cambridge, where they not only recycle the ground coffee waste but turn it into green carbon neutral fuel.
bio-bean kindly sent us a couple of their Coffee Log’ bags to try here in our woodburner in the Bee Shack (our team eat and meet room). We normally burn wood in this so it caused great excitement to the team that we would be burning coffee grounds. Once we opened the bag, everyone’s first instinct was to have a sniff. The logs don’t really smell of coffee but do have quite a sweet smell. The logs’ are smaller than the wood logs we’re used to, more like briquettes really, very compact with minimal mess. There are 16 logs in a bag, most suitable for domestic use, but for larger use bio-bean also make pellets and are currently researching biodiesel production.
The bio-bean Coffee Logs not only burn longer, but they burn cleaner too. We were amazed by the intensity of heat that came off these logs, far more than the usual wood logs. bio-bean Coffee Logs are available to buy easily online from Ocado and Amazon.
Being lovers of proper ground coffee, we think it’s amazing that the bio-bean factory can produce 50,000 tonnes a year, that’s the waste from one in ten cups of coffee drunk in the UK!
More information can be found at www.bio-bean.com
