By Natacha Allen, Head of Commercial Events, RCP London Events
As a London events venue hosting over 600 events per year, we are constantly striving to minimise our impact on the environment and coming up with innovative ways of doing so.
Sustainability is a key part of our everyday operations across all areas of the business including catering, waste management and energy. Our strategic objectives have been to look at all areas of our business to ensure all our suppliers and service partners are environmentally conscious and committed to helping to improve our waste streams and lowering our carbon footprint substantially.
We recently formed an exciting partnership with bio-bean, the world’s largest recycler of spent coffee grounds and we are delighted to celebrate recycling our first 1,000kg of coffee grounds into eco-friendly fire logs and oil.
In partnership with our recycling and waste management company, First Mile, our coffee grounds, which formerly went into the RCP’s food waste and were processed by anaerobic digestion (AD) into compost, are now being diverted and recycled into eco-friendly fire logs and oil, saving 70% of the CO2e emissions versus the grounds being sent to AD.
Recycling waste coffee grounds into coffee logs and oil not only saves on emissions but also harnesses the untapped energy contained in the grounds to give them a second life as a useful product. Spent coffee grounds have a naturally high oil content, and therefore a high calorific value, making them an ideal energy source.
Before being compressed into compact logs and oil, the waste grounds go through an engineered drying process that ensures the moisture content of each log is around 10%; perfect for burning. This, combined with their naturally high calorific value, allows coffee logs to burn 20% hotter and longer than kiln-dried wood. They burn, on average, for an hour, depending on the appliance efficiency and its airflow control.
The venue’s coffee waste, along with waste from other sites, is processed and used in fire pits and ovens across the UK. In 2022 alone, the venue hosted over 30 summer pizza parties, baking freshly prepared pizzas in their sustainable pizza oven. The oil that is extracted is sent for other uses, such as the manufacture of cosmetics.
We are delighted to announce such positive results from our partnership with First Mile. This initiative further adds to our sustainable efforts this year and in years to come.
