Public Funding for Revive Eco LTD.

The hospitality sector has been one of the hardest hit industries from COVID-19\. Therefore, action is needed to help cafes and restaurants that have been damaged by the pandemic, and the resultant lockdown, to recover. UCGs cost the hospitality sector around £70m per year in waste management costs, with the vast majority ending up in landfill adding huge volumes of greenhouse gases to our atmosphere. Revive Eco Ltd. (Revive) is a Glasgow based startup, on a mission to maximise the value of materials previously thought of as waste. We collect used coffee grounds (UCGs) from across Scotland, saving our customers money on their waste management costs. UCGs contain a range of high-value triglycerides. Triglyceride derivatives are most often used in cosmetics as an emollient or an emulsifier. As an emollient, triglycerides help to enhance skin-hydration by sealing in the skin's moisture and reducing evaporation. Triglyceride derivatives emulsification properties serve as a thickening agent for skincare products. This allows ingredients with differing solubility to form a more consistent solution. Overall, triglyceride derivatives are highly beneficial to infuse into personal care products as a way to provide better spreadability as well as alleviate skin dryness. Unfortunately, these ingredients are normally sourced from environmentally questionable sources such as palm oil. Palm oil's carbon footprint and its association with deforestation have made it a morally questionable product to use for some time. However, with a huge increase in ethical consumerism and anti-palm oil campaigns, it is now becoming economically questionable as well. We, therefore, can provide these industries with a sustainable and locally sourced alternative to ingredients that are currently receiving a lot of negative press. Then, from the residual material left over from our process, a soil conditioner product will be created making the process a truly zero-waste process. We are at the end of a 18 month R&D project funded by Zero Waste Scotland, that allowed us to design and build the first stage of our processing technology. This allows us to dry the UCGs and extract volatile compounds from them in an extremely cost-effective and energy-efficient manner. This has allowed us to establish a small pilot processing facility in Glasgow. The aim of the proposed project is to develop a further process to extract, separate and purify the valuable triglycerides that are normally sourced from environmentally questionable sources, from UCGs. Funding will create four highly skilled jobs, bringing in a wealth of knowledge and experience that will catalyse our development work and allow us to commercialise more quickly and efficiently. It will allow us to develop a truly impactful and innovative new business model one that sees us extracting the absolute maximum value from what was previously viewed as a waste.