Students develop soap using coffee grounds

Business case 2: Processing coffee grit into ecological hand soap ORCAS

Worldwide, 1.6 billion cups of coffee are drunk every day. The coffee consumption in Belgium in the period between 2002-2006 was 3.8 cups per day per person. The global consumption of coffee causes 23 million tonnes of waste annually, including coffee grounds and packaging. Coffee grounds are the product that remains when ground coffee beans are poured over with hot water. After making each fresh cup of coffee, this coffee grounds are thrown straight into the rubbish bin. Currently, there are already many initiatives that process and use coffee grounds. For instance, coffee grounds are used as nutrients for fungi, they are processed into coffee bags and they are used in beauty products because of their antioxidant effect. Within this project, the students were looking for an innovative product. So they processed coffee grounds together with orange peels into a bar of soap. This ecological hand soap was given the name ORCAS: Orange Caffeine Soaps. To achieve this, they carried out numerous experiments in a laboratory, adding shea butter, olive oil, orange peel, sunflower oil and, of course, the coffee grounds. The result was six bars of soap that were finished with the ORCAS logo.

Students melt the soap and add coffee grounds.

Do you have an idea and can you use the technical knowledge of the students and teachers of Vives? Then contact us via upcycleyourwaste@vives.be or stay up to date with the project via this link.