Turning urban waste streams into fungi

Sporo has been a pioneer in the valorization of urban waste streams, particularly coffee grounds, for sustainable mushroom cultivation. With a strong focus on circularity and a decade of experience, the company has refined the process of turning waste into a high-quality growing medium. By mixing coffee grounds with other local ingredients and sterilizing them, they are creating a sustainable and circular solution for mushroom production. Sporo is now scaling its efforts to close the loop locally and reduce reliance on linear supply chains. Sporo was initiated by the founder and operations manager of rotterzwam Rotterzwam has more than 10 years of experience in growing mushrooms from spent coffee grounds.

Each year, approximately 60,000 tons of coffee grounds are generated across offices, restaurants, and factories in the Netherlands. While some of this residual stream is separated for collection, most are still incinerated, digested, or composted rather than being processed into high-value applications. This represents a significant missed opportunity for circular solutions. Furthermore, despite increasing interest in mushrooms cultivated on urban residual streams like coffee grounds, production remains small-scale and labor-intensive, limiting its economic viability. Additionally, most larger mushroom growers in the Netherlands rely on a single substrate supplier, which uses straw imported from Southern Europe. This dependency presents challenges related to sustainability, cost, and the increasing scarcity of high-quality straw due to climate change.

Sporo aims to address these gaps and wants to further scale its operations, create a circular system, and minimize reliance on non-local, linear supply chains for substrate production.