Eco coffee guru Gemma Guilera
ScientiSt Gemma Guilera, 45, co-founded Moving Beans with her husband Mike Dohler, a professor of technology, and their friend, Dan Hardej, an engineer, in 2017. She lives in London with Mike and their two daughters, noa, 11, and Dalia, 12.
I’VE ALWAYS loved coffee and used to drink seven cups a day in my 30s. I wouldn’t recommend this!
At the time I was working at a synchrotron particle accelerator, which produces a special light that allows us to study the chemical components of materials. The light lasts only a week at a time, so often I had to work for three days without sleep.
I got such a thrill out of making possible the impossible. However, I became unhappy at work and eventually I had a breakdown. I was shaking from the stress and thought: ‘I can’t live like this.’
So, in 2013, I quit. It was scary starting from scratch at 38. But I think when you hit rock-bottom, it can lead to something amazing.
I found a job at a government programme which supported entrepreneurs. Then, in April 2017, Mike showed me an article his friend Dan had sent him about the horrific environmental impact of the coffee industry; specifically the plastic and aluminium pods used in most coffee-makers, as 70 per cent are never recycled.
A staggering 56 billion of them end up in landfill every year, and they will take hundreds of years to break down. This was our chance to make a difference. Over the next year, the three of us set about developing a sustainable, compostable material for the pods, which would be compatible with Nespresso machines.
It was difficult to change the material without the coffee going stale or losing flavour. But we never gave up.
In 2018, we launched our first range of Fairtrade Moving Beans coffee. We now have six flavours, all sold online in the UK, Australia and Hong Kong.
You can dispose of the pods in your council bins for recycling garden waste. However, we’re also releasing a home-compostable range this year.
Our goal is not to change people’s habits, but to make existing ones more sustainable — and save one billion pods from landfill by 2025.
We want to make this affordable. Ten capsules cost £2.80, with free delivery on orders over £30.
I never thought I would run a coffee business, yet life is so unpredictable. It’s never too late to reinvent yourself.