- Ford is looking to partner with McDonald's to recycle coffee chaff, the husk of coffee beans that peels off during roasting.
- "By heating the chaff to high temperatures under low oxygen, mixing it with plastic and other additives and turning it into pellets, the material can be formed into various shapes," Ford told The Verge.
- To start with, the chaff will be recycled and molded into headlamp housings for Ford products, which will produce lighter components and, in turn, improve the cars' efficiency.
- Both companies want to carry on collaborating with one another for a more sustainable future.
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What if there were a way we could somehow make use of the waste that's leftover after coffee beans are roasted? And what if we could use the waste to help reduce the environmental impact of the automotive industry?
It might sound ambitious but, at Ford, the idea of using coffee to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars is no laughing matter.
The American car manufacturer is planning to partner with McDonald's to recycle coffee chaff — the husk of coffee beans that peels off during roasting — and mold the residue into headlamp housings.
"By heating the chaff to high temperatures under low oxygen, mixing it with plastic and other additives and turning it into pellets, the material can be formed into various shapes," the manufacturer told The Verge.
Once heated, mixed with other components, and converted to bioplastic, the residue will allow car manufacturers in producing components that are 20% lighter.
Though the weight reduction might not seem significant, it will improve the energy efficiency of vehicles and in turn reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
Ford's interest in recycled materials isn't actually anything new; founder Henry Ford, was already using soybean-based products by the early 1940s.
Since 2011, soy foam has also been used by the company in manufacturing some of its products' interiors.
Though electric vehicle sales continue to grow across the globe, a Greenpeace report indicates that the automotive industry's global carbon footprint still contributed to 9% of the world's CO2 emissions in 2018.
That's more than the annual greenhouse gas emissions of the entirety of the European Union — that said, Ford's proposal may still be a promising step towards reducing that figure somewhat.
McDonald's outlets in the US have pledged to donate a "significant portion" of their chaff to Ford, according to CNBC.
According to the news outlet, 2018 saw McDonald's sell around 822 million cups of coffee in just the US — that isn't an insignificant quantity of coffee chaff.
Varroc Lighting Systems is looking to produce headlamp housings for the company before the end of the year. The manufacturer is hoping to use the same material for interior components too.
Senior technical leader of Ford's emerging materials research team Debbie Miewelski told CNBC that the components will have a longer life and that the material will also be more heat-resistant.
Both McDonald's and Ford hope to carry on looking at more ways to collaborate with one another on creating a more sustainable future, including looking at utilizing more waste products.
"They must have a lot of ketchup discards — tomato skins and peels and seeds," Mielewski told CNBC. "What about their French fry potato peels? We're convinced we can probably do some chemistry and make something out of those as well."
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