Turning city waste into biofuels

By 2050, over two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities. Urban infrastructure is already running well over capacity and innovative solutions are required to cope with this mass migration. Combine this with the fact that cities are also responsible for 80 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions and it becomes clear city life requires a rethink if it is going to meet the challenges of climate change and rising population growth.

One man who has begun reimagining the modern-day metropolis is Arthur Kay, founding partner of bio-bean, a company that turns London’s waste coffee grounds into advanced biofuels. We got the chance to chat with him.

What led you to become a founding partner in bio-bean?
My background is actually architecture, but more broadly, I am interested in the urban economy, focusing on extracting value from waste and other choice aspects from within the city. This enabled me to come up with the idea, but also gave me the skills from which to set up a business off the back of it.

It is quite unusual, I think, for someone to start outside their normal sphere and come to run a business that is not within their direct area of expertise or interest. Mine is neither in waste management nor even in biofuels; I am a generalist.

Do you think your position initially as an outsider has given you a unique perspective on the renewable energy industry?
I really do actually. I think first a fresh-eyed approach, looking at challenges and problems from a different perspective. I came up with the idea while designing a coffee shop and coffee roasting facility, and looking at how to build a waste stream, by using a, at the time, relatively theoretical idea of using waste to power and heat buildings, which is not what most waste managers, or indeed most coffee shops, would be thinking about. This enabled me to come up with the idea, and also to develop some of the technology to industrialise the process.

How does the technology behind bio-bean work?
The front end is logistical: we work with existing waste contractors to piggyback off the supply chain, instead of putting additional trucks on the roads. We work with coffee shops and coffee factories to acquire that waste and then bring it to our facility, which is just outside London.

We use a drying technology and then an oil extraction technology, and finally a pelletising technology to valorise these wastes and turn them into two end products. The first is a biomass pellet, and the second is a biodiesel. The pellet is used in biomass boilers for heating buildings and the biodiesel is used in standard combustion engines to power vehicles.

What is the size of that market?
The biomass pellet market in the UK, we are talking about several million tonnes a year, with the Drax power station [in North Yorkshire] alone consuming about four million tonnes a year. In terms of the biodiesel market, we are talking about billions of litres in the EU, so both are very large markets and definitely well established. And I say this with a pinch of salt after the recent oil price debacle, but relatively stable markets too.

Coffee grounds are also used as fertiliser and in anaerobic digestion plants. Does that make them harder to get hold of?
I wouldn’t say it impacts us in terms of the scale that we are talking about at bio-bean, but it certainly does with how the consumer perceives it.

The first thing to mention is that we are not a bespoke or small-scale solution to this problem. We have industrialised the process and it is at that industrial scale that we are really looking to treat and deal. The UK alone produces about 500,000 tonnes of waste coffee grounds each year. That is a lot of fertiliser to spread on your geraniums. Even the most ambitious listeners of Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time would struggle, so it is really about applying this technology at an industrial scale.

From my perspective, it is very good that people can use coffee grounds on their roses or to grow their mushrooms, but we are looking to work with some very, very big organisations at both ends of the supply chain in order to raise the whole industry, rather than looking at smaller scale, bespoke solutions.

What are the differences between your method and that employed by anaerobic digestion plants?
Anaerobic digestion is great because it is relatively simple. It is a very inefficient technology in some cases, and it is also quite capital-intensive. It is better than landfilling, that is for sure, but it is not actively positive for the environment. It remains one step off our technology: we have zero-percent waste and produce two carbon-neutral biofuels.

What is the ambition behind bio-bean?
I see the city as the most important space for human beings going forward. With an increasing urban population globally, I think the main challenges we face today, whether they be waste, energy, infrastructure, access to water or even our collective physical and mental well being, are challenges we feel more extremely in cities. My interest is in coming up with innovative solutions to city living, of which this is one, but I hope to set up companies and organisations that deliver further solutions of this nature.

Bio-bean is step one, certainly from a personal perspective, but also with bio-bean we are looking to valorise not just coffee waste streams but a whole host of additional waste streams that are currently a cost to get rid of, with nothing presently being done about them. These are things we would love to get our hands on in order to provide solutions that are positive for the economy and, obviously, the environment.

You’ve said you want to create a business structure that is environmentally and socially conscious. Could you elaborate?
I can’t go into too much detail about some of the ideas I am currently developing, but I can give you examples of what other people are doing from around the world that I think are pretty exciting.

One that is fantastic, which is happening in Santiago, in Chile, is looking to provide a very simple solution to the lowest common denominator step up from slum dwelling. So, again, providing a mass solution at a very, very cheap cost. What that company essentially does is add concrete shelters onto existing houses that can be » adapted and retrofitted as people move up the economic ladder. They simply provide a shell of a house, with water and electricity going into it. It is the retrofitting approach to council housing, and allows the inhabitants, as they move up the economic ladder, to adapt it to their personal needs and the environment.

Another example is a delivery drone, so, instead of a pizza or a package being delivered by courier or even the Royal Mail, this is a small electric drone, which essentially acts as your postman in the morning, your delivery boy at night, or a special delivery on a bespoke basis.

The final example, which I think is pretty exciting, is in Beijing. It has not been brought to market yet, but it has a rollout plan. The Chinese have developed what has been termed a ‘straddling bus’: a bus that essentially has runners either side of the road and can transport people at a fraction of the cost of developing rail infrastructure. It essentially piggybacks off the existing road infrastructure and can carry hundreds, if not thousands, of passengers at one time, at a very low cost, as well as reducing a lot of congestion at the same time.

Those are just three examples that are quite exciting projects, and projects that represent what cities in the next 20 to 30 years are going to look like.

Do you think the political environment in the UK is conducive to accomplishing the necessary environmental objectives?
Broadly speaking, I think yes, because I am not advocating scrapping everything and starting again, or even a huge change in political direction. I am more suggesting that, as part of our economic fabric, the environment and social values will increasingly need to play a role. You know, there are a number of very big companies that are beginning to understand this. Environmental strategies used to be a nice tagalong for business, but they are increasingly becoming essential.

I think, in the ideal world, you would not need to have environmental strategies and programmes in place because they would become so central to what the business did anyway, because, if they didn’t, it would cost so much it would become economically unviable. Of course, they would want to recycle because they could use that material in their next set of mobile phones or whatever business it is. It is about building that change into every aspect of people’s lives and organisations so it becomes the norm, as opposed to the exception. I think currently, it is still the exception, but increasingly less so.

To answer your point about what government should be doing, frankly, I would hope that governments would be leading from the front, however, that is not what we can expect. In an ideal world, yes, the government would be dictating to those businesses that they think aren’t doing a good enough job, but evidently that is not the case. But the key is to understand that it is not about putting heavy tariffs in place or bullying business. Instead, it should be made more attractive for businesses to do the right thing than the wrong thing. That is what I think government should be doing.

UN scientists say the world must cut all CO2 emissions by 2070 to prevent a global catastrophe. Is that achievable?
80 percent of emissions come from cities and I would suggest that, if we want to solve the problem, we should stop talking about global climate change and start talking about urban climate change. Because, if 80 percent of emissions do come from cities, then let’s address it where the problem lies, as opposed to talking to the world as if everyone is equally at fault, when it is clearly down to 400 cities around the world with million-plus populations. Let’s talk to those cities, rather than the whole world. And let’s come up with solutions that directly solve their challenges and problems. That is the low-hanging fruit.

Do you think different cities should specialise in different renewable industries?
I think that is critical, because you can’t apply a solar solution as effectively in Glasgow as you could in Marrakech. If it is going to be a carbon-neutral solution, we have to rely on the cities’ natural surroundings heavily and be aware that we are not going to take a step back economically or culturally as a result of these solutions, which are scalable to meet the challenges that we face today. Because, if we do what some people suggest – which is to simply stop importing oil and halt the use of fossil fuels – you know, that would have huge catastrophic impacts on our societies’ as it stands today.

Do you think those in the coffee industry are doing enough to protect against climate change?
Coffee is a fascinating crop and it gives a very interesting metric in terms of how we are
doing in a number of aspects, not just climate change, but economically. It is an absolutely massive industry and very well vertically integrated. It is also the second most traded tropical good in the world, after petroleum. It is an indicator.

In my own experience, we have focused very specifically on the human element on the coffee story, and rightly so. We have previously looked at the front end of the supply chain; the Fairtrade Foundation and Rainforest Alliance stand as a testament to that. Frankly, after people drink it, they do not care what happens to it, and so our interest is very much in terms of, you know, we drink over a couple of a hundred billions cups of coffee globally each year, and 100 percent of that, in terms of used coffee grounds, is wasted. It’s fantastic that we are focused on the front end of the supply chain, however, let’s also look after it once we are done drinking it, because we are turning our back on it currently.