Are Your Coffee Bags Eco Friendly?
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:
Comments
Post a Comment