Upcycled coffee pods or a future without them?

40,000 new coffee capsules are produced per minute in the world. Approximately 30,000 of them end up in landfills, where they can stay for 500 years before degrading. They are resistant because they need to withstand high pressure and temperature in the coffee preparation.

Have you ever thought about where the coffee pod of your machine will end up?

Any resemblance to cloth filters is not accidental…

The Swiss supermarket chain Migros launched CoffeeB, a machine that uses pressed coffee balls wrapped in a protective layer of 100% raw vegetable-based material, maintaining its freshness and aroma. The resulting product is 100% compostable, with no packaging waste to worry about.

It is worth remembering that this idea is not new, in 2017 we already talked about capsules made of sugar here, the big difference from NEXE is that it has no sugar, respecting consumers who do not consume the sweetened beverage.

Nespresso leads upcycling actions, an example is the partnership with the Swedish brand Velosophy, to produce RE:CYLE bikes with their recycled aluminum pods. Each bike contains about 300 pods.

For €1290 + shipping this bike could be yours!

Another product, Caran D’Ache pencil, is made with 25% of the pen’s aluminum body from used Nespresso capsules and the pencil’s lead is made from recycled coffee grounds. It’s great to see solutions that take advantage of coffee grounds, there are many more examples with it, but that’s a topic for another post.

And while we don’t have a world free of them, upcycled coffee pods are still a light at the end of the tunnel. And next time you have a  coffee, think about where it ends up.