Recycling is a wonderful way to save the environment, conserve energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and recover valuable materials. As a specialty coffee roaster, Clarena’s Coffee is incorporating recyclable packaging for our products. Both, bags and labels help reduce environmental waste.
Exactly what does it mean to be “recyclable”?
For millennia humans have converted waste into reusable objects and materials. But with industrialization, recycling has become critical. In the 1970s the importance of recycling gained international attention. In the face of increasing energy costs, manufacturing costs, and concern over increasing waste, recycling is a necessary aspect of modern economies.
Nowadays, a material is considered recyclable if it can be used again, either for the same purpose or to create a new product. Recycling reduces raw material consumption, energy consumption, air pollution, and water pollution. Furthermore, it reduces the amount of waste going to municipal landfills.
What is the Recycling Mobius Loop?
The recycling symbol is a Mobius loop comprised of three arrows circling back on themselves. They circle clockwise and form a triangular shape. The symbol indicates that a product can be recycled, but it does not mean it was manufactured from recycled materials. In some cases, the middle portion of the label indicates how much of the product is made from recycled materials.
Does Recyclable Packaging Affect the characteristics of Coffee?
Nicole Battefeld is a German Barista Champion and Female Barista Society founder. She has been working in the specialty coffee industry professionally for about six years. During this time, she has worked as a barista, roaster, and barista trainer.
To test how different coffee packaging affects various characteristics of the coffee, Nicole developed an experiment. Using three different bags, she put the same Colombian filter coffee (El Zacatin) into a biodegradable bag, a recyclable bag, and a standard paper bag with an aluminum foil lining.
She compared each cup side by side 18 days after roasting, as she knew this was the day when each coffee reached its “peak.” Each cup was measured in four categories: aftertaste, acidity, body, and sweetness.
Nicole rated the recyclable bag preserved the characteristics of the coffee the best out of the three. She says “It was bright and not quite as heavy as I had expected. My taste buds were delighted with the taste of blood orange, red punch, cinnamon, red plum, and a red apple. Crisp, refreshing, and sweet – I was blown away by this coffee.” She added,” The acidity in the coffee from the recyclable bag was much more structured than that from the standard aluminum lined paper bag.”
Alico Metal-free Recyclable Coffee Bag
The need to become more aware of the environment isn’t a trend, it’s a necessity. Here, we offer our specialty coffee in a line of environmentally friendly bags, including recyclable Alico bags.
During packaging and shipping, coffee beans need protection from moisture, contaminants, and shipping rigors. Alico packaging can provide this protection and ensure coffee beans remain stable. We have spent a lot of time helping our customers maintain the high quality of their products through recyclable packaging.
Alico, a Colombian packaging company works continually to improve its metal-free pouch-making technology. The whole idea is to remove the aluminum foil layer so that the packaging can be recycled into the existing, well-established polyethylene recycling stream.
Aside from making the material compatible with the PE recycling stream, eliminating foil and polyester also reduces energy consumption by requiring just two layers of lamination rather than three. Apart from all these benefits, another major benefit is that the flavor and aroma of coffee are best preserved when stored or packed in Alico recyclable packaging. Ground coffee stored in the Alico material has a shelf life of about 8 months.
The bottom line
It’s time to move from single-use to reuse and recycling. As consumers become more environmentally conscious, their beverage choices are positively influenced by recyclable packaging. Coffee roasters, coffee shops, and consumers can all help minimize environmental impact by either using or insisting on recyclable product packaging.
