Personally I have a love-hate relationship with Starbucks. It's not anywhere close my top ten places to go get my coffee fix, yet each Yuletide I return like an addict to get my Eggnog Latte...
Whether you're a Starbucks fan or not, it is an interesting company to follow as it's no longer just about coffee. Among its digital innovations, the brand is also keen to show off its eco credentials. The coffee giant's latest sustainability project is to recycle food waste as 'ingredients' for cleaning products.
Contributing to the almost 1.3 billion tons of waste that end up on landfills every year, Starbucks is hoping to combat this by working with biorefinery scientists to turn food waste - mostly coffee grounds - into ingredients that make plastics, laundry detergents and other product we all use every day.
Carol S. K. Lin, Ph.D., who led the biorefinery research team at the City University of Hong Kong says of the initiative:
Our new process addresses the food waste problem by turning Starbucks' trash into treasure -- detergent ingredients and bio-plastics that can be incorporated into other useful products. The strategy reduces the environmental burden of food waste, produces a potential income from this waste and is a sustainable solution.
The project will first take place in Hong Kong. There is no news so far when it will reach the European continent.
