Verda Waste – a South African recycling company is building a plant that will process coffee waste into biofuels.

The company plans to be in the forefront of industrializing the process of converting waste coffee grounds into biofuels by recycling 17 million kg/year of spent coffee grounds into 1.8 million litres/year of biodiesel and 4,5 million kg/year of biomass pellets and fire logs.

Coffee is one of the most consumed beverages in the world, with more than 9m tonnes of the bean produced annually, and is the second largest traded commodity after petroleum.

Due to the great demand of this product, large amounts of residues are generated in the coffee industry, which are toxic and represent serious environmental problems and the vast majority ends up in our landfills. 

This multi-million plant will recycle about 70,000 tons of coffee waste that would have otherwise ended up on our landfills over the next 5 years, saving 476,000 tons in carbon emissions.

According to Mr Fischer Khambule – CEO of Verda Waste, “ Not only is this plant good for the environment, jobs for the youth and more than 100 small business opportunities will be created”. This Johannesburg based plant is anticipated to be completed in the first quarter of 2019.

If you would like to know more, please send us an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.