Peterborough Reuse
Repurposing Coffee SacksTHE CHALLENGE
Masteroast, a coffee roasting and packing facility based in Peterborough, was sending between 800 and 1,200 hessian sacks to landfill every week. They posted a challenge on the city’s Brainwave Innovations Portal asking for ideas as to how the sacks could be re-used, thus diverting them from landfill.
THE SOLUTION
After spotting the challenge on Brainwave, city entrepreneurs Pav Patel and Gary Graves presented a proposal to repurpose the sacks into trendy shopping bags, with the remainder used for river bank re-enforcement. Following a memorandum of understanding with Masteroast to receive the unwanted coffee sacks and grant funding from Peterborough DNA to kick-start the idea, Peterborough Reuse was born.
THE RESULTS
To date 33 tonnes of hessian sack has been diverted from landfill which instead has been repurposed to make 6,600 shopping bags, all lined with 715kg of unwanted curtains from local charity shops.
The Environment Agency, with endorsement form Atkins Global Consultancy, is using the sacks to build up river banks that have been damaged. Previously materials were sourced from Bangladesh, so the carbon footprint has been reduced significantly too.
Sixty local women from deprived parts of the city have been trained, improving their self esteem and confidence. 16 are now in part-time employment making the repurposed shopping bags.