Hyundai Steel to upcycle coffee waste

Hyundai Steel is looking towards upcycling 360 tons of coffee waste a year, saving up to 210 million in disposal costs while creating jobs.

In 2019, Hyundai Steel teamed with the Korea Productivity Center and Korea Green Foundation to find new uses for coffee ground wastes via the Coffee Waste Resource Recovery Project.

In the first year, Hyundai Steel inked MOUs with 10 institutions, including the city of Incheon and Ministry of Environment, to establish a system to collect coffee waste in the region.

According to a Hyundai Steel official, the company is looking forward to more local governments participating in the third year of the project.

Only 0.2 percent of the coffee grounds end up in the final product, with 99.8 percent discarded as waste.

About 150,000 tons of coffee waste is either incinerated or buried in South Korea.