Scientists in Scotland have used spent coffee grounds collected at the Glasgow Coffee Festival to produce new cosmetic products.
Revive Eco, based at BioCity Glasgow, used the coffee grounds collected at the Festival to create a coffee skin oil.
Revive says it has secured £350k in investment, including through a crowdfunding campaign, and will be raising more money next year to allow it to scale up production.
Revive Eco is one of 20 life science businesses at BioCity, a 26-acre site 13 miles east of Glasgow.
Commenting on the new product, Scott Kennedy, Co-founder and Director of Revive Eco, said: “Tonnes of coffee grounds are thrown out every day, despite the value and the different potential uses of the oil they contain.
“The reaction to our products has been great and a real demonstration of how we can offer an alternative to palm or coconut oil, whose use in cosmetics has had such a devastating impact on some of the world’s ecosystems.”
Kennedy and his fellow co-founder Fergus Moore first identified the potential of coffee waste when they were students at the University of Strathclyde.
Revive was launched as a business in 2015 and relocated to BioCity six years later, where it has received support from Pioneer, Scottish Enterprise, Zero Waste Scotland, and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.
In 2021, Revive’s scientists finalised and patented their upcycling process, and earlier this year, a successful pilot project took place with French company SAS Pivert using grounds supplied by Costa Coffee.
Moore says the next step is to work with a partner to produce coffee oil on a commercial level.
“Spent coffee grounds have always been just the first step for us,” Moore said. “Our goal is to demonstrate that we can create value and positive environmental impact from a range of different waste streams.”
John Mackenzie, Director (Scotland) at Pioneer Group, commented: “The work of Revive is so important in demonstrating that any ambition for a circular economy is not pie in the sky.
“This unlikely union of waste and skincare just shows what can be achieved with great imagination, fantastic science and a lot of hard work by Scott, Fergus and the rest of the Revive team.”