A1 Environment started in 2012 as a general recycling and paper trading company. Sustainability IS the core of the company - it is what we do.

A1’s founders combined have been in the waste management industry for over half a century and the business is based on sustainability and creating a circular economy.

We upcycle grounds in 2 ways. Since we started recycling spent coffee grounds in 2012, we have been sending it to a local organic farm. In the past couple of years, we have been working together with Nanyang Polytechnic to create a fire-retardant material that is made up of around 50% of coffee grounds.

We have had many suggestions of ‘why don’t you ... [some kind of idea of what to do with coffee grounds]’ and believe me, we asked ourselves almost all of them. The harsh fact is, there are many ideas of what to do with coffee grounds, some are even good ideas, but what is applicable at such a large scale is another matter.

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COFFEE IN COMPOST

We have approached other farms, but they have been unwilling to try or receive coffee grounds to be included as part of their compost formula, for one reason or another. And even if they do pay for other components of their compost, they are unwilling to pay for coffee grounds, because it is untested. Local farms have also been very proprietary of their compost mix, so till now, very little information has been shared about how coffee grounds actually help in large scale agriculture.

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MANUFACTURING

Ultimately, we are a waste collection and management company which sent our recyclables to companies whose expertise was to create products from the recyclables. So, we reached out to companies who had current technology in upcycling spent coffee grounds but they were uninterested or unable to bring the technology to Singapore. After working with NYP to find a solution, we tried to find partners to come in as the manufacturing arm in the project as we understood that they had the experience in it, but we were turned down too.

In the end, we reached a point where we had to pull our socks up and say “we will do it ourselves”. Definitely, much research can still be done on the other available methods and even how we can improve our current product but we have our limitations of size and capital at the moment. We are not closing the doors there yet though. It is a case of starting now, not being perfect, but developing step by step.

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WHERE WE SEND COFFEE GROUNDS

This has been the largest hurdle we have faced. This sounds rudimentary but without an alternative for the grounds to be used or processed, we cannot collect the coffee grounds. You might as well throw them into the regular waste bin. There is a limit to the amount the farms can accept, and we are only just starting to move into larger production of the coffee material.

This is also the reason why we have not started shouting about our services, and clients only find us through word-of-mouth, because we know that there is a limit to what we can process at the moment.

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‍HIGH COSTS

Being based in Singapore, we face many of the same challenges that any business in a high-cost country faces - rental, logistics, manpower, all of which are essential to our core business, are extremely high. The double-edged sword of requiring licences and permits for almost every single part of what we do, is an added challenge we have to face.

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EDUCATION

Next would be education - all the way from partners, clients to authorities. A1 Environment is currently the only coffee recycler in Singapore with little to no precedence of what we are doing, at the scale we are doing it at. This means there is no set box we fit into, and no predetermined checklist we get when telling the agencies and clients about what we do.