Thousands of kilos of used coffee grounds from events to fuel biomass boilers

From hot coffee to hot boilers; by recycling thousands of kilos of coffee grounds etc.venues’ latest sustainability initiative is now helping to fuel biomass boilers.

The used coffee grounds resulting from many thousands of events each year at the venues are now being processed to create carbon neutral biofuel pellets that are used to power biomass boilers.

etc.venues is unusual in that each cup of coffee is produced using freshly ground beans. Consequently, each cup brewed leaves 25g of used coffee grounds. With close to a million cups of coffee drunk each year at etc.venues’ 15 UK properties, that is 25,000 kg of grounds that are now being recycled instead of going to waste.

Adam Simpson, Director of Marketing at etc.venues says: “Iain Dix, our Director of Property and Projects, who is also responsible for sustainability, and the whole team are continually looking for new ways to reduce waste and be more sustainable. This is a simple change that is helping us to achieve both at the same time.

“In 2019 almost 1 million delegates attended a total of 19,000 events in our UK venues and, after a great start to the year and strong forward bookings we are on course potentially to exceed to those levels of business within the next 18 months, especially with new venues expected to open in that time. It’s not only traditional in-person events and meetings that are returning, in addition our venues are now the ‘Third Space’ for many organisations that, since downsizing their offices, no longer have rooms of their own for larger team meetings.

“We’re soon going to be generating even more used coffee grounds so it’s great that they will be put to a good use.”

www.etcvenues.com