From facial scrubs using coffee grounds to clothes made from plastic bottles and furniture decorated with agave fibers, efforts to upcycle or repurpose waste products are gaining traction in Britain.
Every day a bike courier for the skincare brand Upcircle visits 25 cafes in London and collects about 100kg of coffee grounds that would otherwise be thrown away.
Set up six years ago by Anna Brightman and her brother Will Brightman, Upcircle reuses the coffee grounds to make beauty products, adding ingredients such as camomile infusions or a powder made from olive stones.
Photo: AFP
The siblings took the plunge to set up their own business after working for multinational companies.
“I wanted to do something that was closer to my heart,” Anna Brightman told reporters. “It was my brother who had the initial inspiration when asking out of curiosity at the coffee shop where he was going every day what happened to the coffee grounds.”
“He was shocked to learn the coffee was disposed of at a landfill and they had to pay on top for it,” she said.
She joked that she and her brother have since “made a name [for themselves] as the crazy siblings collecting coffee around London and making cosmetics.”
Once the coffee collections got going, “people started to contact us with all types of by-products,” Anna Brightman said, adding that more than 15 of them are now incorporated into their range.
Among these are water from making concentrated fruit juices, fading flowers that get thrown away by florists and leftover chai spices.
Upcircle pays for some of these ingredients, although the coffee grounds, for example, are free.
However, the logistics involved in collecting them can be complex and costly.
Every year, half a million tonnes of coffee grounds are thrown away in the UK and the firm claims to have recycled 400 tonnes to date.
Nevertheless, the idea of marketing a beauty product made from “trash” initially got a thumbs-down from industry insiders, Anna Brightman said.
They have to work to get the message across that “these ingredients we are working with are not gross, old or unclean,” she said.
Younger people are “more open to the idea of the circular economy,” she said. “For obvious reasons, they are concerned about the future of our planet.”
Used coffee grounds work better as a skincare ingredient than dry ones, said Barbara Scott-Atkinson, the formulator for Upcircle’s products. “It’s been heated and it’s damp. This makes it more suitable to use than plain ground coffee and the level of antioxidants increases.”
The company sends the ingredients for repurposing at its factory in Bridport on the southwest coast of England.
To combat ravaging the planet’s resources, entrepreneurs and designers are increasingly coming up with new ways to create value from waste.
An exhibition called “Waste Age” at London’s Design Museum showcases the use of agave, or sisal fibres, by Mexican designer Fernando Laposse, who studied at London’s Central St Martin art school.
Laposse turns the natural fibers of the plant — used to make tequila — into avant-garde furniture such as tables, benches and hammocks.
He also uses colorful corncobs from his country of birth to make furniture and veneer, helping boost the “circular economy” and create jobs.
“In the UK, we recycle 15 percent of our waste, the rest is incinerated or put in landfill,” said the exhibition’s curator, Gemma Curtin.
The Design Museum exhibition also shows chairs made from old refrigerators, baskets decorated with fishnets recovered from the ocean and creations by fashion designers, such as Stella McCartney and Phoebe English, who use recycling.
This prompts visitors to question what “luxury” is, Curtin said.
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