Coffee is one of the most popular beverages in the world – by some accounts, the most popular of all. With that popularity comes literal tons of waste each year. We've seen a variety of strategies for recycling and repurposing coffee waste, much of it focused on used grounds. Morii Outdoors travels a bit farther back in coffee's life cycle, reusing the byproducts of roasting as a natural firestarter medium for camping, backpacking, outdoor survival and just good ol' backyard cookouts.
After taking a look at the Bean Pod micro-camper earlier this week, we got to wondering what kind of other gear and accessories would be showing up at this weekend's 2025 Missouri Overland Off-Road Expo (MOORE). While the ever-growing Overland Expo series has long been smack on our radar screen, the MOORE show has largely slid underneath. It has built up an impressive showing of exhibitors, though, some of which we haven't come across at any of the Overland Expo events we've attended. The 2024 show, for instance, included a showing of the BFX, one of the burliest off-road camping trailers we saw all year.
In poking around this year's MOORE slate, we didn't stumble on anything quite as gnarly as the BFX, but we did find the Coffee Campfire Starter from Morii, a little Arkansas outfitter looking to innovate smart, fun gear for outdoorsy folks. While we won't be at the show to check it out in person, we know from experience that humble fire-starting gear can be among the most intriguing at a given event – who doesn't love a good floating flame, fire-and-ice display or flame-sparking hiking boot?
Morii skips the theatrics of some past fire-start-ups, focusing instead on making a product that's as circular and sustainable as possible. And what better place to start than the cup of coffee you might recognize from every morning you've ever lived throughout adulthood.
There are some conflicting numbers out there to just how much waste the coffee industry sends to landfills each year, but even at the low end, we're talking about tens of millions of tons. Perhaps the most readily visible chunk of that comes in the form of used grounds and disposed single-use cups, but much of it happens before the roasted beans ever even make it to the local drip or espresso machine.
So while it is possible to dry out used coffee grounds for use in fire-starting, something we're now keen to try while camping out in the hot, sunny desert, Morii focuses instead on an earlier step in the worldwide coffee ecosystem. It looks to the roasting process to provide the raw material for its firestarter. Specifically, it uses the coffee bean husks that shed during the roasting process and are usually simply disposed of in the garbage.
Morii blends that coffee husk byproduct with beeswax into an all-natural ready-to-light material that eliminates the petroleum-based paraffin wax, fuels and other synthetics commonly used in firestarter blends. Not only does that add to its sustainable, eco-friendly credentials, but it makes the Coffee firestarter safe to use in indoor fireplaces and a cleaner alternative when using a wood or charcoal fire for cooking.
Anyone who's ever tasted a faint (or not so faint) hint of lighter fluid or similarly acrid flavor in grilled food can understand how cleaner is better, even for fire ingredients meant to burn off before cooking.
Moriii says each small firestarter square burns for up to 10 minutes, plenty of time to ignite kindling and fuel into a healthy fire. As an added bonus, it says the firestarter gives off a noticeable scent of freshly brewed coffee as it burns, a welcome aroma for any coffee lover and maybe even a little mental pick-me-up for weary travelers.
Morii packages eight fire-starting blocks into a reusable water-resistant tin. Each eight-unit tin costs $11, with discounted rates kicking in for those buying three eight-packs or more. We typically do our own form of recycling when it comes to starting fires, repurposing old paper, dryer lint, cardboard and other common household waste, but we hope to give these a try to see if the longer burn and coffee scent improve the overall fire-making experience. Plus, the loose squares and pocket-friendly tins are more neatly packable for activities like backpacking and bikepacking.
Source: Morii Outdoor