I’ll power buses with coffee grounds says winner of £400,000 eco prize

 
Fuel source: Arthur Kay of bio-bean
Matt Watts15 September 2014

London buses could one day be fuelled by coffee leftovers after a project to turn grounds into biofuel won a European environmental prize.

Eco-entrepreneur Arthur Kay today said the £400,000 prize money would enable his start-up company bio-bean to revolutionise transport.

Bio-bean, based in Tower Bridge, has already signed up some of the nation’s biggest coffee chains to collect waste from their shops and factories.

The firm uses a patented process to turn coffee grounds into biodiesel and fuel pellets at a factory in Sussex.

Mr Kay, 23, who launched the company 18 months ago, collects about two per cent of the estimated 200,000 tonnes of coffee drunk by Londoners each year. If it were all converted into fuel, bio-bean calculates it would save CO2 emissions equivalent to driving a bus 7,675 times around the world. Mr Kay hopes to use the prize money to advance plans to recycle up to 40 per cent of London’s coffee by this time next year.

He discovered the technology while studying architecture at University College London, where his brief was to design a more eco-friendly coffee shop. He said: “I’ve never been an eco warrior at all but when I saw this I thought it was brilliant, and I couldn’t believe no one was using these technologies on a large scale.

“Too often with green solutions, it’s very touchy-feely but doesn’t make a big difference in the end. But this one is going to make a huge difference.

“With this prize money we can scale up production to other locations throughout the UK. We also want to expand internationally to Northern Europe and the US.”

The Postcode Lottery Green Challenge award was presented by Dame Ellen MacArthur in Amsterdam last night.

Mayor Boris Johnson said: “This level of green innovation is brilliant to see — we are 100 per cent behind bio-bean, which is absolutely full of beans.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in