Cars and coffee? It’s usually a gathering of car folks that takes place on the weekend, early in the morning. But that ain’t the kind of cars-meet-coffee crossover Ford’s researchers are interested in.

The automaker is instead, believe it or not, teaming up with McDonalds to turn the restaurant’s coffee bean waste into car parts, to help reduce Ford’s carbon footprint.

The parts are made of coffee chaff, which is the dried skin of the coffee beans that naturally falls off during the process of roasting them. Chaff is usually used for garden mulch, but through an innovative process, Ford thinks it’s able to turn them into reinforcing material for plastic.

The chaff is heated under pressure in a low-oxygen environment, and mixed with other materials to create pellets that can be formed into car components. Headlight housings and other interior and underhood components could be made from the material.

The bioplastic made from the chaff is up to 20 per cent lighter and uses 25 per cent less energy to mold. The heat properties of the chaff are also better than the components that Ford currently uses.

A lighter car that uses less energy to build will help Ford reach its targeted CO2 emissions reductions, as well as better its fuel economy ratings.

So next time you pull up to a cars and coffee event in your Mustang and somebody offers you a hot cup of joe, tell them you’ve already got one under the hood. Then get a regular coffee, before they look at you funny.