TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Treasured trash: UK waste gets new lease of life
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Repurposed ‘luxury’: Clothes designed by British fashion designer Stella McCartney made with waste materials are on display on Feb. 2, 2022 at the “Waste Age: What can design do?” exhibition at the Design Museum in London. (AFP/Tolga Akmen)
F
rom facial scrubs using coffee grounds to clothes made from plastic bottles and furniture decorated with agave fibers, efforts to upcycle or repurpose waste are gaining traction in Britain.
Every day, a bicycle courier for skincare brand UpCircle visits 25 cafes in London and collects some 100 kilograms of coffee grounds that would otherwise be thrown away.
Set up six years ago by Anna Brightman and her brother Will Brightman, UpCircle reuses the coffee grounds to make beauty products, adding ingredients such as camomile infusions or a powder made from olive pits.
The siblings took the plunge to set up their own business after working for multinational companies.
"I wanted to do something that was closer to my heart," Anna Brightman told AFP.
"It was my brother who had the initial inspiration, when asking out of curiosity at the coffee shop where he was going every day, what happened to the coffee grounds," she said.
