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BECOMING MASTERS IN SUSTAINABILITY COFFEE FIX
FINDING A NATURAL SOLUTION
Environmental Science Master’s student Sarah Mayson turned her love of coffee into a potentially revolutionary idea for coffee shop and roastery businesses looking to become more sustainable.
Natural climate solutions (NCS) are conservation, restoration and improved land management actions that increase carbon storage or avoid greenhouse gas emissions in landscapes and wetlands.
“My morning caffeine fix got me thinking about the spent coffee grounds generated from the millions of cups of coffee being consumed on a daily basis worldwide,” said Sarah. “I wanted to focus on circular economy thinking for my Master’s dissertation and I started to wonder if those coffee grounds could be reused in the coffee roasting process.”
From his studies, Environmental Science Master’s student James Fryer felt that NCS might offer some of our best options in the response to climate change, but he didn’t know how to test his ideas.
Ian Williams, Professor of Applied Environmental Science, worked with Sarah and saw great potential in her idea. “I suggested to Sarah that we work with a real coffee company to determine the chemical properties and combustion characteristics of spent coffee grounds, as well as their energetic potential in comparison to fossil fuels and conventional-biomass,” said Ian. “If we could show that burning the coffee grounds could power coffee roasteries, we could suggest a viable circular economy for this multimillion-pound industry.” And the results? Sarah’s research did indeed show that a circular economy (CE) system between production in coffee roasteries and consumption in coffee shops achieves waste reduction. In the system she studied, spent coffee grounds generated lower emissions in comparison to fossil fuels, demonstrating the environmental benefits of transitioning to a CE system. “By recovering value from spent grounds as part of the coffee supply chain shows significant promise towards achieving a CE system,” explained Sarah. “This means reduced raw material extraction, waste generation, landfill disposal and CO2 emissions.” Sarah’s project was published as a peer-reviewed paper. “I’ve been asked several times to present the work at international conferences,” she said. “And I’m very proud and thrilled with the outcome of the study. I hope it will inspire the coffee sector to engage more strongly with circular economy activities and test the approach further in its own case studies.”
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Ian Williams, Professor of Applied Environmental Science in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, helped James to work up his thoughts to a research project and supervised the study. He said: “James wanted to undertake a project on carbon held in vegetation because it interested him and he warned to learn new skills. I suggested we coupled two models to investigate carbon stocks in the New Forest National Park. Accurate assessment of carbon stocks remains a global challenge and the New Forest contains 20 conservation areas, so it provides a wonderful case study. It was a big test for James as he had to learn a lot of new technical skills, but he did a fantastic job.” The study provided a new, higher accuracy, regional carbon assessment approach by modelling high-resolution land cover data. Current total carbon in the New Forest National Park is between 7.32 and 8.73 Mt of carbon (Mt is a metric unit equivalent to 1 million (106) tonnes, or 1 billion (109) kilograms), with current trajectories of land cover change leading to relatively minor losses. However, alternative scenarios indicated possible gains or losses, with the importance of vegetationdriven carbon storage greater than the national average. The study was able to rank the potential storage capacity of different land cover classes and show how knowledge of potential carbon storage can support management decisions globally to reduce carbon losses, avoiding greenhouse gas emissions, and enhance gains therefore increasing sequestration. “Balancing the global carbon budget relies upon maintaining existing vegetation as land cover,” said Ian. “Our new approach to classification permitted greater detail and accuracy, enabling future policy decisions to optimise carbon storage at local and regional landscape-scales.” James’ thoughts about natural climate solutions ended up as a study published via a peer-reviewed paper. He said: “It never occurred to me that my studies could end up in a prestigious international journal. It just goes to show that the University of Southampton really does give its students an opportunity to change the world for the better.” The skills James gained enabled him to find employment alongside several other recent Environmental Science alumni at Hampshire-based company Carbon Footprint Ltd.
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