How your morning coffee can supercharge sustainable construction

Bricks made from used coffee grounds could soon reshape Australia’s construction industry, and its carbon footprint, thanks to researchers at Swinburne University of Technology.

Led by Dr. Yat Wong, the project has now reached a commercial milestone: an IP licensing deal with Green Brick to bring the product to market. The low-emission bricks are made by blending used coffee waste from cafes and restaurants with clay, then adding an alkali activator. This process allows the bricks to be baked at just 200°C, 80% lower than traditional firing temperatures.

“It’s lighter on energy, faster to produce, and designed to reduce electricity-related CO₂ emissions by up to 80% per unit,” Dr. Wong said.

Traditional brick manufacturing is energy-intensive and relies heavily on high-temperature kilns powered by fossil fuels. By contrast, this new method dramatically lowers the environmental toll, providing a sustainable alternative for an industry under increasing pressure to decarbonize.

Sustainability isn’t the only benefit: the bricks double the Australian minimum standard for strength.

Green Brick’s founder, Philip Ng, says it’s not just about disrupting the brick, it’s about redefining how construction materials are valued in a net-zero economy.

“For the last century, materials have been judged by one thing: cost per square meter, but in the next chapter, we’ll judge them by carbon, transparency, and circularity. And those metrics favor a whole new kind of product,” Ng says.

Coffee consumption in Australia is booming, with over 1.3 million cups sold every day, generating roughly 10,000 tons of spent coffee grounds each year. Most of that waste ends up in landfill, where it emits methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Redirecting that waste stream into a valuable building product offers a dual environmental benefit: reducing both landfill and emissions.