The New Wood competition 2025: Wastage from coffee roasteries turns into printing dye for wood-fibre carrier bag
Uusi puu – The New Wood Project shows what wood can do. The project promotes wood-based innovations and provides information about them.
The Tampere University of Applied Sciences developed waste from coffee roasteries into a printing dye. The dye can be used on fibre-based materials such as the wood-based Paptic® carrier bags.
The manufacturing of printing dyes still relies significantly on synthetic, and often fossil-based, pigments. Together with Natura Indigo Finland, the Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK) is developing a new solution to challenge conventional dye manufacturing.
The TAMK innovation utilizes coffee waste from roasteries, which is available in ample quantities as a by-product of coffee roasting. Instead of the coffee waste being burned straight away for biogas, Natura Indigo Finland extracts a brown dye from it and dries this to a pigment powder.
The product is a bio dye derived 100% from coffee waste, suitable for use on fibre-based materials. The first tests were carried out on the Finnish Paptic®carrier bag made of a wood-based fibre material. This means that both the printing dye and the packaging itself are made of renewable, biodegradable raw materials.
The coffee waste dye offers an alternative to synthetic and often fossil-based pigments., with a carbon footprint that is virtually zero. As the dye is made of industrial sidestreams, its production does not require primary raw materials or, for example, land for cultivation; nor does it compete with food production. This reduces both the environmental burden it causes and dependence on non-domestic raw materials, as well as supporting circular economy.
The use of surplus streams as raw materials is an important step towards responsible manufacturing that turns waste into a resource. TAMK and Natural Indigo Finland believe that for printing dyes, this trend can bring a change across the entire packaging sector, where synthetic dyes have long been the established norm.
Forest.fi and New Wood are initiatives of the Finnish Forest Association.