Overnight News Digest June 20 2026: Coffee grounds to biofuel, fungi insulation, carbon capture bottlenecks
dailykos.comA roundup of climate and clean tech stories from June 20, 2026. Researchers in South Korea developed a way to turn wet coffee grounds into high-grade biochar in 90 seconds without pre-drying, tackling the 10 million tons of annual coffee waste that mostly ends up in landfills. Another team engineered microbes to convert biodiesel waste glycerol into a plastic ingredient at 300-liter scale, offering an alternative to petroleum-derived naphtha. University of Bath researchers showed that fungi can break down resin-treated construction wood waste into mycelium-based insulation that is thermally efficient and fire resistant. A separate piece examines the bottleneck facing carbon capture scale-up, noting that 2024 was the first year global temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. The digest also covers recyclable 3D printing resin and a dual-function organic semiconductor that both harvests and emits light.