Pontefract Castle turns coffee waste into £10k award-winning idea
Pontefract Castle is turning yesterday’s coffee grounds into tomorrow’s cash after landing a £10,000 national award for an inventive new project.
The historic attraction has won the Seeds of Change programme, run by the Association for Cultural Enterprises, for its plans to transform used coffee grounds from the castle’s Keep Café into a range of quirky, heritage-inspired products.
The From Grounds to Goods project will see castle staff and volunteers team up with local artist Jane Howroyd to develop and test new products over the next 12 months.
And there is already one unusual creation in the bag – seed ‘cannonballs’, made using discarded coffee grounds.
The idea began when a member of the castle team started experimenting with ways to reuse the grounds produced by the recently transformed café.
The early trials showed that what would normally be thrown away could instead become a distinctive product linked to Pontefract Castle’s history.
Now, the £10,000 funding will help turn the idea into a wider retail range, with plans including natural pigments and dyes and further development of the seed bombs.
Coun Lukasz Borcz, Wakefield Council’s Cabinet Member for Culture and Sport, said: "This demonstrates the creativity of our staff and volunteers.
“Securing national recognition, and external investment of £10,000, is a significant endorsement of the work taking place.
"The project has the potential to create distinctive new products and generate additional income which will be re-invested to keep improving the castle site for visitors in the years to come.”
Products will be developed and tested throughout the next year, with new items expected to go on sale as they are ready.
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