With a booming construction market globally<\/a>,\u00a0there’s an ever-increasing demand for resource-intensive concrete, causing another set of environmental challenges.<\/p>\n Watch the video below for a summary of the study:<\/p>\n “The ongoing extraction of natural sand around the world \u2013 typically taken from river beds and banks \u2013 to meet the rapidly growing demands of the construction industry has a big impact on the environment,” said<\/a> RMIT engineer Jie Li.<\/p>\n “There are critical and long-lasting challenges in maintaining a sustainable supply of sand due to the finite nature of resources and the environmental impacts of sand mining. With a circular-economy approach, we could keep organic waste out of landfill and also better preserve our natural resources like sand.”<\/p>\n Organic products like coffee grounds can’t be added directly to concrete because they leak chemicals that weaken the building material’s strength.<\/p>\n So using low energy levels, the team heated coffee waste to over 350 \u00b0C (around 660 \u00b0F) while depriving it of oxygen.<\/p>\n This process is called pyrolysis<\/a>. It breaks down the organic molecules, resulting in a porous, carbon-rich charcoal called biochar<\/a> that can form bonds with and thereby incorporate itself into the cement matrix.<\/p>\n Roychand and colleagues also tried pyrolyzing the coffee grounds at 500 \u00b0C, but the resulting biochar particles were not as strong.<\/p>\n The researchers cautioned that they still need to assess the long-term durability of their cement product.<\/p>\n They’re now working on testing how the hybrid coffee-cement performs under freeze\/thaw cycles, water absorption, abrasions, and many more stressors.<\/p>\n The team is also working on creating biochars from other organic waste sources, including wood, food, and agricultural.<\/p>\n “Our research is in the early stages, but these exciting findings offer an innovative way to greatly reduce the amount of organic waste that goes to landfill,” said<\/a> RMIT engineer Shannon Kilmartin-Lynch.<\/p>\n “Inspiration for my research, from an Indigenous perspective, involves Caring for Country, ensuring there’s a sustainable life cycle for all materials and avoiding things going into landfill to minimize the impact on the environment.”<\/p>\n Related: One Way of Drinking Coffee Could Help You Live Longer, Study Finds<\/a><\/p>\n In 2024, RMIT and Macedon Ranges Shire Council poured a world-first real-world trial<\/a>: a footpath in Gisborne, Victoria, made with the coffee biochar concrete alongside a wood-chip-biochar section and a standard-concrete control section.<\/p>\n Later that year, Victoria’s Big Build used coffee-biochar concrete for a footpath on the Pakenham Roads Upgrade<\/a> \u2013 the first major infrastructure project to use it \u2013 with contractor BildGroup estimating the job diverted roughly 140,000 coffees’ worth of grounds from landfill and saved more than 3 metric tons (3.3 US tons) of sand.<\/p>\n In early 2025, the RMIT team picked up the People’s Choice Problem Solver Award<\/a> at Universities Australia’s Shaping Australia Awards, and said<\/a> they were working with a commercialization partner to build a business case to bring the material to market.<\/p>\n Their research was published in the Journal of Cleaner Production<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article was fact-checked by Fiona MacDonald<\/a> and edited by Fiona MacDonald<\/a>. While we pride ourselves on our process, we are only human. If you spot a mistake, please let us know<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charred coffee grounds could make concrete up to 30 percent stronger, scientists in Australia have found. Their clever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":894729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1352,79],"class_list":["post-894728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-msft-content","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792978089_986_0.jpg\")
frameborder=”0\u2033 allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen><\/p>\n![\"sand](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/sand_mining_equipment_642.jpg\")
Global demand for sand is increasing, and so are its environmental impacts. (Pixabay\/Pexels<\/a>)<\/p>\n![\"micrographs](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/microstructure_coffee_642.jpg\")
Scanning electron microscope images of the surface structures on the pyrolyzed coffee grounds. (Roychand et al., Journal of Cleaner Production, 2023)<\/p>\n