Unique Ways Coffee Brands Can Reuse Grounds

The coffee industry is embracing sustainability from the ground up. Reusing grounds is one of the most effective ways to build a more eco-friendly coffee brand — this versatile by-product has applications ranging from compost and packaging to skincare and candles.

Whether you want to expand your product offerings, enhance your brand image, improve operational efficiency, or drive your industry forward, this guide to reusing coffee grounds will share sustainable strategies you can use to achieve your business goals.     

Offer New Products

Each year, the coffee industry generates around 60 million tons of used coffee grounds, much of which ends up in landfills, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. The good news is that used coffee grounds can have a second life, reducing their own carbon footprint while giving your customers more exciting options and generating more sales for your business.

Here are five ways sustainable brands have reused coffee grounds to expand and improve their offerings:

1. Candles: By mixing coffee grounds with candlewax, you can create candles that burn with the sweet fragrance of your customers’ favorite roast. You could even partner with a local candlemaker to create a signature scent for your customers, complementing the coffee aroma with luxurious essential oils.
2. Coffee logs: Coffee grounds have a high calorific value and, when compacted, burn hotter and longer than regular firewood. These logs are ideal for firepits and wood burners, and exude an invigorating coffee aroma while burning.
3. Skincare products: The oil extracted from coffee grounds has properties for UVB protection, moisturizing, anti-aging, antibacterial exfoliation, hair care, and wound healing. This makes it a popular ingredient in skincare and beauty products, including face scrubs, masks, and body lotions. If you partner with a skincare company to create a coffee-based product for your customers, look for a partner whose eco-friendly values align with yours.
4. DIY kits: You can create fun, giftable DIY kits to help your customers and their friends and family make their own facial scrubs and garden fertilizers with used coffee grounds.
5. Biodegradable packaging: Researchers have shown that transforming spent coffee grounds into biodegradable packaging is possible. As the technologies and processes become standardized, more coffee brands can move toward a closed-loop model by packaging their products with a coffee-based material.

Create a Sustainable Brand Image

Reusing coffee grounds and encouraging your customers to do the same can contribute to an eco-friendly image and sustainable coffee brand strategies that resonate. 

About 44% of customers worldwide say they’re more likely to buy from a brand committed to sustainability. Products making environmental, social, and governance claims have seen 28% cumulative growth in recent years compared to 20% growth for other products. This growth is most significant when brands make distinctive claims and back them up with consistency in their sustainable practices.

Let your customers know about your commitment to reusing coffee grounds or helping them do so, depending on your business model. For example, if you sell coffee to customers online, you could run an extended social media tutorial series on creative DIY applications for used coffee grounds and invite your audience to share their creations via user-generated content. This approach starts an engaging conversation about coffee grounds and sustainability with your brand at the center. You could even collaborate with DIY bloggers and sustainability influencers to create fresh content about reusing coffee grounds.

Reusing coffee grounds can lay the groundwork for messaging and community engagement around a broader commitment to sustainability, including:

• Sourcing your coffee from partners who share your commitment to sustainability.
• Using sustainable packaging, including compostable soft pods and cups for Keurig.
• Incentivizing customers to return grounds and packaging for reuse and recycling initiatives.
• Pursuing certifications to verify your sustainability efforts.
• Sponsoring the coffee at an environmental charity event.
• Creating a sustainability page on your website detailing your coffee sourcing, packaging, and reuse practices.

Improve Operational Efficiencies

Reusing grounds can help you run a more effective, efficient coffee business. Here’s how:

• Minimizing operational waste: Reusing coffee grounds cuts down your waste, ensuring more of what your business produces works for you. Conduct regular waste audits to identify new opportunities for recycling coffee waste.
• Reducing waste disposal costs: Used coffee grounds are wet and heavy. Separating them from your general waste bins makes reusing them easier and can lower your waste disposal costs by lightening the load.
• Adding revenue streams: Expanding your product line with goods made from reused grounds can increase your sales and revenue.
• Building partnerships: Partner with reliable, eco-friendly suppliers who share your values. You could also collaborate with local community gardens, farms, and composting facilities that can use your coffee grounds as fertilizer.

Build Effective Partnerships

Collaboration around reusing coffee grounds creates opportunities for partnerships that move the industry forward. Here are four opportunities for groundbreaking collaborations:

• Artisans: Partner with local artisans to create unique, eco-friendly coffee products using your grounds. For example, you could help your local craft brewery develop a coffee-infused beer. Other possibilities include coffee-based barbecue sauces or clothing dyed with coffee grounds. These collaborations can increase brand awareness, open new markets, and promote sustainability.
• Research institutions: Team up with a local university or research institution to explore innovative ideas in coffee by-products utilization, from commercial materials to biofuels.
• Fellow coffee entrepreneurs: Collaborate with other coffee brands to promote sustainability standards for collecting and reusing coffee grounds. Consider establishing a platform for knowledge sharing to support sustainable business practices.
• Government: Advocate for policy change to incentivize reusing grounds, like tax breaks and subsidies, and join forces to educate the public about the benefits of reused coffee grounds.

Partner With Joe’s Garage Coffee for a Sustainable Coffee Business

Reusing coffee grounds is one of the most impactful ways to run a more sustainable coffee business. However, environmental change, like business growth, depends on the right collaborations. With Joe’s Garage Coffee, you have a supplier that shares your commitment to sustainability.    

With industry-leading turnaround times, we can deliver all the high-quality coffee and packaging you need to succeed, including compostable soft pods and Keurig cups. Plus, Joe’s Garage Coffee is a supplier you can scale with — we offer low order minimums to get you started and high-volume capacity to take you where you want to go.     

Contact us today to discuss a custom coffee supply program to suit your business goals.