Would You Drink Coffee Made from Food Waste? The Rise of Beanless Coffee Explained

 Every single second, the world consumes about 26,000 cups of coffee. On Shanghai’s Huaihai Road alone—less than two kilometers long—you can find nearly 50 cafés, each with its own style. Coffee has long since become a nationwide obsession. Enthusiasts eagerly debate bean origins, processing methods, and flavor notes, yet few stop to ask a deeper question: What hidden burden does this beloved drink place on the planet?

From a food-industry carbon-emissions perspective, coffee ranks just behind beef, lamb, cheese, and chocolate. Data shows that producing a single cup of coffee consumes roughly 140 liters of water, while growing and processing one kilogram of coffee beans generates about 17 kilograms of CO₂.

Viewed through the lens of Western environmental narratives, this kind of data practically screams: ban it.

How could such an “unethical” product escape scrutiny in one of the world’s environmental flag-bearers—the UK? British research has already sounded the alarm: by 2050, nearly 50% of land currently used for coffee cultivation may become unsuitable for farming. Traditional coffee growers may be forced to abandon their farms, leading to future supply shortages. Meanwhile, climate change pushes coffee cultivation to higher altitudes, accelerating deforestation and creating a vicious cycle. Production costs rise, premium beans grow scarcer—and where there’s a problem, there’s also a business opportunity.

That’s where beanless coffee enters the picture.

Biotech startups have begun exploring alternatives, and the concept sounds eerily similar to lab-grown meat. Roasted coffee contains over 1,000 volatile compounds—how could anyone possibly recreate that? Even the most advanced labs admit that perfect replication is impossible. And yet, a few companies have come remarkably close.

So far, three players stand out.

Atomo: Brewing Coffee from Food Waste

Seattle-based startup Atomo took a bold shortcut. Instead of chasing all 1,000 compounds, they identified 28 key components responsible for what our taste buds recognize as “coffee.” If those are present, the brain fills in the rest.

Even more intriguing: caffeine levels are fully customizable. Unlike traditional decaf processes, Atomo can make coffee completely caffeine-free or turn it into a high-octane stimulant. In short: what you can taste, we replicate; what you can’t, we skip. As for how awake you want to be—just set the dial.

Their ingredients are even more radical. They extract usable compounds from items like dates, chicory root, and grape skins—essentially food waste—and convert them into those 28 key elements. In a street blind-tasting, 70% of participants said Atomo’s “waste-based coffee” tasted smoother and sweeter than Starbucks. The company has already launched canned coffee, priced at $6 per can.

Compound Foods: Fermentation Meets Terroir

Compound Foods uses microbial fermentation to recreate coffee flavors. Through food science and fermentation technology, sustainably grown microorganisms produce beverages that the company claims are sweeter, brighter in acidity, and more aromatic than traditional shelf coffee.

They’re also building a massive coffee flavor database, aiming to replicate the distinctive profiles of beans from different regions. While they haven’t disclosed detailed ingredient sources, they likely overlap with Atomo’s approach.

VTT: Lab-Grown Coffee Cells

Finland’s nonprofit research institute VTT takes a different route. Scientists extract cells from coffee plants and grow them in nutrient-rich bioreactors. The result is a floating biomass that, once dried and roasted, resembles freeze-dried powder. Add water, and you get a cup of “lab-grown coffee.”

No need to cultivate entire coffee trees—just grow the drinkable cells. That said, one might reasonably ask: Don’t coffee plants themselves also impose ecological costs?

The Promise—and the Pushback

These beanless coffees do offer compelling advantages. Compound Foods claims their method reduces greenhouse gas emissions and water use by up to 90%, while Atomo says its process cuts resource consumption by 94%. Production is also climate- and season-independent; as long as technology and hygiene standards are met, “coffee farms” could exist anywhere in the world, slashing transportation costs.

But among hardcore coffee lovers, even fully automatic pour-over machines are dismissed as “soulless.” Beanless coffee, then, feels almost heretical.

And there’s a bigger ethical question: What about regions whose livelihoods depend on coffee farming? You can’t just eliminate an industry and tell people to wait for sustainability to trickle down from the sky. When survival itself is at stake, preaching environmentalism can feel hollow.

So the question remains: If coffee no longer comes from beans, would you still drink it?