Coca-Cola Supports Coffee Grounds Collection

Coca-Cola HBC Hungary is joining the Hungarian Agricultural and Life Sciences University (MATE) to develop coffee grounds collection solutions to recycle the valuable waste generated by its catering partners, the company told MTI on Wednesday.

Ideas are invited from the 27 student teams that applied to the Zaccmentő ['coffee grounds rescue'] competition, which closed on September 22. The students have until mid-November to work on their solutions. The organizers of the initiative said that 80% of the adult population in Hungary drink coffee, and 14,000 tons of coffee grounds are generated from the 18,000 tons of coffee consumed annually.

They added that Coca-Cola, as one of the largest players in the domestic coffee market, has more than 2,200 customer partners, but almost one in two of them throws their coffee grounds in the trash, and only 10% of them would like to compost them, but they have no opportunity to do so. Feedback indicates that the majority of corporate partners in the hospitality and tourism sector would be interested in a collection scheme.

The communication says that coffee grounds are a mineral-rich material, yet there are few good solutions for recycling. Its valuable components could be used in the food, pharmaceutical, agricultural, packaging and fuel industries. However, this requires solutions for transport, storage and preservation of the components. Coca-Cola hopes to find a workable solution for recycling and, with this knowledge, to move forward with the recycling of coffee grounds.