As conscientious food choices go, coffee offers us a lot of them. Most visibly, in the areas of fair or direct trade, and sustainable farming. It’s glad to see some coffee roaster have worked very hard to reduce the emissions by using more eco roaster. But what about the waste?
Though coffee is itself an organic, biodegradable product (it's fruit!) few of us live near enough to the source to eliminate the necessary evil of packaging. Coffee bags are usually made out of several layers of different types of material. These usually include, plastic, foil and paper. Foil is the worst material that will cause worse overall impact on emissions and overall human health.
How to pack greener? Let’s remove the foil. So are Recyclable pouches and compostable pouches.
Recyclable Pouch: A bag that can be collected and reprocessed to produce new pouch or new product, only mono type products are recyclable. Some coffee bags are now made entirely from plastic that can be recycled. They’ve removed the foil and paper and the bags are made from high barrier PE/PE. The valve is also made from PE, so the full bags are recyclable.
Some customers have asked why they don't use paper packaging. Unfortunately most paper bags suitable for coffee are actually plastic lined. As they are mixed material they can't be recycled. Therefore, some roaster think the recyclable pouch is a compromise between finding the right packaging to keep the product fresh and reducing the impact on the environment.
In fact, coffee bag is going to be fully compostable and still keep your coffee fresh, not just for a shorter term. The barrier performance is as good as the foil bags.
Compostable Pouch: The EPA definition of compostable is an organic material that will decompose under a controlled biological process in the presence of air to form a humus-like material. Compostable products must biodegrade within a reasonable amount of time (a couple months) and produce no visible or toxic residues. Composting may occur in an industrial or municipal composting site or in a home composter.
Some roasters think compostable are made from plant based materials that are often produced in countries that have cut down forests in order to plant crops to make these materials. Another major issue is that many of these bags can only be composted in commercial facilities. This means that most end up in the bin and in landfill which doesn't really solve the problem. However, BPS have launched home compostable coffee pouch made from 100% biobased material, which will solve these problem.
As the coffee industry evolves into a more and more thoughtful direction, many specialty roasters are exploring the world of ecologically sensitive, compostable or biodegradable bags to hold their beans. Some brand name coffee roaster have introduced environmentally friendly bags into their retail repertoires. How about you?
Learn more about a variety of sustainable packaging solutions to Coffee Packaging:
Compostable vs Biodegradable: Which Pouch is Best for the Environment?
Compostable Stick Packs for Supplement Powder
BPS Eco-friendly Packaging for Dietary Supplements
Bag-in-box: Pack Your Juice in a Shelf-stable and Preservative-free Format Eco-conscious Packaging Solution to Your Juice
