Coffee grounds contain many nutrients which are excellent for growing mushrooms. This secondary raw material is even ready for use, having been sterilised at 80 to 90°C by the coffee machine. What's left once the mushrooms have been collected is a good fertiliser.
The EU's Bioregio project covered a range of initiatives, all of which are described in its website: from a waste management system in Jelšovce Distillery in Slovakia to biogas units for household applications in Romania and a Spanish project combining the fight against food waste and social inequality.
EntoGreen aims to develop sustainable feed and organic fertilisers by using bio-based technologies to recycle nutrients from agricultural and food waste and reintroducing them into the food chain, thus closing the nutrient cycle.
The RiceRes research project, launched in 2016 by the CNR (National Research Council) and the Universities of Milan and Pavia and financed by the Cariplo Foundation, aimed to make the most of waste materials from processing Italian rice.
Peecycle aims to reduce the production and import of fertilisers from all over the world while making more efficient use of an inexhaustible source of minerals which is currently viewed as waste: urine!
Each of the companies in the Envien Group produces a biofuel component, with waste used for specific purposes, such as manufacturing pelleted animal feed or as a co-substrate for biogas production.
Italian startup Vaia has developed a passive loudspeaker for smartphones by using - as raw material - exclusively wood brought down by storm Vaia that badly hit the Dolomite mountains in Northern Italy in 2018.
