CASE STUDY 3: De Clique (Netherlands)

De Clique collects food waste from 50 businesses, including coffee grounds, orange peels and other culinary by-products, using bicycle couriers and electric vehicles.

These by-products are collected as pure waste streams, which De Clique then sells to external inventors and product manufacturers who use them to create new products such as food ingredients, cosmetics, and biomaterials.

The Hub also hosts several entrepreneurs who use organic waste, as well as horticulture and composting companies.

Creative businesses that work with De Clique are:

• Peelpioneers, that produces hand soap and cleaning products from orange peel.
• Rotterzwam, that grows oyster mushrooms using used coffee grounds as substrate. These mushrooms are then processed into products such as vegetarian bitterballen, a traditional Dutch bar snack.
• De Leckere, that uses orange peels to make orange beer.

To measure the environmental impact of the products, De Clique and its partners produce impact reports:

• 6 kg of CO² emissions are avoided for every 1 kg of food waste that is composted, sold to customers, or used to grow tea and mint.
• 7 kg of CO² emissions are avoided for every 1 kg of orange peel processed into products such as flavourings, essential oils, fibre, and candied peel.
• 6 kg of CO² emissions are avoided for every 1 kg of leftover coffee grounds used to grow oyster mushrooms for bitterball snacks or as compost.