Did you know that coffee is the most popular drink in the world, with more than 400 billion cups being drunk every year? That's a lot of coffee beans.

It takes 42 coffee beans to make an espresso, so billions if not trillions of beans are used every year to satisfy global demand. That also adds up to a lot of coffee grounds once each cup is made.

So what happens to all those coffee grounds? Many will end up in the bin and in the landfill sites, which is such a waste. But there are grounds for optimism. Innovators are coming up with some really cool ways to put those coffee grounds to good use.

If you're at home, you can sprinkle your coffee grounds on your garden or window boxes to act as a fertiliser.

On an industrial scale, the grounds can be recycled and turned into energy. The average coffee shops creates 10kgs of waste every day, which can be converted into two litres of biofuel, according to a Daily Mail report.

The article says that University of Bath researchers made biofuel by extracting oil from different varieties of ground coffee. So in the future it may be your car which goes to work on a coffee as well as yourself.

Five years ago, a team from the BBC1 programme ‘Bang Goes The Theory’ built a prototype car - known as the Car-puccino - which was powered by coffee grounds and driven 210 miles between London and Manchester. It had a top speed of about 60mph and did an average of three miles per kilo of coffee, which is the equivalent of about 56 espressos per mile.

The waste from coffee beans is already being used to heat buildings and could be used to power cars or public transport systems in the near future.

A London company called Bio-Bean makes biomass pellets from the coffee grounds to provide a clean alternative to fossil fuels. These pellets can be used to heat buildings. The company is also working on producing biodiesel on an industrial scale to power transport systems.

So coffee beans mean green business ideas as well as a great way to perk up your day.

Why not have a look around our website and then order some coffee and accessories?