- Ford Motor Company and McDonald’s USA announced a partnership where coffee bean skin will be used for making car parts
Ford Motor Company and McDonald’s USA have announced a partnership that will soon give vehicles a “caffeine boost” by using coffee beans in vehicle parts like headlamp housing. Every year, millions of pounds of coffee chaff (dried skin of the bean) come off during the roasting process.
And Ford and McDonald’s can provide an innovative new home to a major portion of that material. The companies learned that chaff can be covered into durable materials for reinforcing certain vehicle parts. By heating the chaff to high temperatures under low oxygen, mixing it with plastic and other additives, and turning it into pellets ― the material can be formed into various shapes.
The chaff composite meets the quality specifications for parts such as headlamp housings and other interior and under hood components. And the resulting components will be about 20% lighter and require up to 25% less energy during molding processes. Plus the heat properties of the chaff component are significantly better than the currently used material.
“McDonald’s commitment to innovation was impressive to us and matched our own forward-thinking vision and action for sustainability,” said Ford senior technical leader of the sustainability and emerging materials research team Deborah Mielewski. “This has been a priority for Ford for over 20 years, and this is an example of jump-starting the closed-loop economy, where different industries work together and exchange materials that otherwise would be side or waste products.”
Here is how it works:
McDonald’s is expected to send a significant portion of its coffee chaff in North America to Ford to be incorporated into vehicle parts.
“Like McDonald’s, Ford is committed to minimizing waste and we’re always looking for innovative ways to further that goal,” added Ian Olson, senior director of global sustainability at McDonald’s. “By finding a way to use coffee chaff as a resource, we are elevating how companies together can increase participation in the closed-loop economy.”
Varroc Lighting Systems (headlamp supplier) and Competitive Green Technologies (coffee chaff processor) are also involved in the project.
Ford has a goal of using recycled and renewable plastics in vehicles globally with an increasing range of sustainable materials. McDonald’s and Ford are planning to continue exploring ways to collaboratively use waste as a resource while furthering their sustainability goals.
And McDonald’s is on its way to sourcing 100% of its guest packaging from renewable, recycled, or certified sources by 2025. For example, McDonald’s is helping develop a compostable cup through the NextGen Cup Consortium and Challenge.
