BeenBean
- Type
- Packaging & Materials Producer
- Location
- Wageningen, Netherlands
- Industries
- Sustainable packaging & plastic alternatives, Waste efficiency
- Domains
- Ingredients, Spent grain (brewers / distillers), Beans, Plant based primary products, Feed
- Technologies
- Resource-recovery technology, Smart Packaging Materials, Circular & resource technologies, Advanced Materials
About BeenBean
BeenBean is a packaging concept focused on biodegradable protective packaging made from used coffee beans. It positions itself as an alternative to polystyrene for shipping and protective applications, aiming to keep products safe while reducing reliance on hard-to-recycle foam materials.
The company frames its mission around waste reduction and circular use of materials: it seeks to divert used coffee beans from landfill and replace styrene-based packaging in applications such as TVs, laptops, deliveries, and other fragile goods. It also highlights the possibility of composting or breaking up the packaging for garden use, linking packaging performance with a lower-impact end of life.
Core Values
- Waste reduction: BeenBean’s concept is built around diverting two waste streams—used coffee beans and polystyrene—away from landfill and into a more useful application.
- Environmental responsibility: The company explicitly positions polystyrene as harmful and difficult to recycle, and presents its own packaging as a lower-impact alternative.
- Circular use of materials: By turning spent coffee beans into packaging and then allowing the material to be composted or used in gardens, BeenBean promotes a more circular lifecycle for packaging materials.
Unique Aspects
- Made from used coffee beans: The packaging is differentiated by its feedstock, using spent coffee beans rather than conventional petrochemical foam.
- Dual waste-stream solution: BeenBean addresses both packaging waste and coffee waste at the same time, which gives the concept a distinctive sustainability narrative.
- Garden-friendly end of life: The company highlights that the packaging can be broken up and sprinkled on soil as a natural fertiliser, adding a compostable or soil-amending end-use beyond simple disposal.