Tunisian entrepreneur discovers a new environmentally friendly fuel source: olives

Many people are trying to do their part to help the environment and combat climate change in all fashions, large and small. A few people turn that goal into a business. One such person is Yassine Khelifi, a Tunisian entrepreneur behind Bioheat, a company that produces and sells burnable bricks made from olive waste as fuel.

Tunisia is one of the world’s biggest producers of olive oil, projected to create 340,000 tonnes of olive oil from 2024 through the end of 2025. The process of creating olive oil creates leftover waste or “pomace.” Rural Tunisians had been burning this olive waste for fuel for their furnaces and using it as feed for livestock for centuries. This is where Khelfi saw potential for an eco-friendly business.

"This is what we need today,” he told France 24 while holding a handful of olive waste paste. “How can we turn something worthless into wealth? I always wondered how this material could burn for so long without going out. That's when I asked myself: 'Why not turn it into energy?'"

After searching for technology throughout Europe that could dry and process the olive waste into solid, dry bricks, Khelfi couldn’t find anything that could do the job. Using his engineering background, he developed a machine that was able to produce briquettes with eight percent moisture. Today, Bioheat is a small operation with only 10 employees but is set to sell and export 600 tonnes of briquettes in 2025, with the majority of its stock being sent to France and Canada.

While Khelfi does hope to profit from the business, he also aims at "reducing the use of firewood as the country faces deforestation and climate change.” Traditional firewood contributes to mass deforestation and takes months to fully dry out to be burned efficiently. Another benefit is that these olive briquettes burn for longer periods of time, saving money on energy costs. One local pizza restaurant in Tunisia claimed that they lowered their energy costs by a third by replacing firewood with Bioheat bricks.

While in a moderate decline since its peak in the 1980s, deforestation is still a global concern. Removing trees for firewood, paper, or other products en masse also removes a resource that reduces carbon emissions on our planet. Ironically, these trees would have been able to help combat the increased carbon emissions created through the processing of wood-based products. The search for substitutes like Khelfi’s olive-based briquettes would help create a more sustainable world overall.

But Khelfi’s discovery is just one example of making a business out of taking a byproduct and finding a purpose for it so it doesn’t add to ever-growing piles of waste. Another example is Toast Brewing Company, a brewery that makes its beer from leftover loaves of bread from bakeries and heel ends of bread from sandwich makers. The Coffee Cherry Company finds and creates uses for the leftover pulp from cultivating coffee beans, turning it into flours and flakes that can be used to make delicious baked goods.

You, too, could also make the most of the food waste you create. Instead of throwing it away, see if you can use some of your food scraps as composting material. It can enrich and create a good soil for a small garden to grow a few veggies to save money on some produce while adding extra greenery around your home. Large or small changes, business or hobby, we can all take part in reducing waste and helping the climate.