London Has Found a New Use for Your Used Coffee Grounds

Coffee’s not just here to wake you up or give you that much-needed afternoon jolt anymore. Nope, it’s evolving — and in a big way. Now, instead of just fueling you, it’s going to fuel buses, too.

Thanks to London-based tech firm bio-bean and oil company Shell, select London buses have begun running on biofuel made with waste coffee grounds. How? The specially formulated biofuel, which contains coffee oil extracted from the waste coffee grounds, is mixed with diesel, and voilà!

According to bio-bean, the United Kingdom produces half a million tons of waste coffee grounds each year. Unfortunately, most of that ends up in landfills, eventually emitting methane gas, which damages the environment and contributes to climate change.

But, as they’ve demonstrated, it doesn’t have to be that way. Collecting waste coffee grounds from coffee shops, offices, and various other places, bio-bean manufactures the biofuel that powers the buses.

Powering these public transit buses with the coffee fuel doesn’t only lessen the amount of toxic methane gas being released into the ozone, but it helps cut down on carbon dioxide emissions, too. With the planet warming at an alarming rate, such large-scale changes as this can’t come fast enough.

Coffee fuel isn’t the only bio product that the geniuses at bio-bean have come up with, though. They also created Coffee Logs, which are used to fuel stoves, fires, and chimineas; and Biomass Pellets, which are used to heat buildings.

What do you think — ingenious, or overkill? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to SHARE this news with your java-loving friends!

(H/T Mashable)