We’re very happy to say, our paper bags are back! If you’ve been buying our coffee for a while you might remember we used to use paper bags for all retail packaging - we loved those bags; plastic-free, UK-made and so easy to recycle. Unfortunately, our supplier went into administration, and we couldn’t find a viable alternative without shipping them across the globe.

We’ll be going back to paper for all 250g packaging sold on our website. This being said, we will be sticking with recycled plastic for wholesale orders, as we know these bags typically sit in bags for weeks/months before they’re bought. For web orders we send coffee within days of roasting so we can guarantee freshness!

It’s really quite simple. Our new retail packaging is 100% paper-based, meaning it can be recycled with your household paper. It’s this simplicity that makes it so good. All councils in the UK provide curbside paper recycling, which makes the best end-of-life scenario very achievable, no matter where they go.

The environmental credentials of food packaging have become confusing at best, often representing the perfect oxymoron. So often, plant-based plastic alternatives are worse than their predecessors for emissions and impact on the land. Plus, more often than not, they go into general waste and then landfill, making the whole thing almost entirely pointless.

Soft plastic (LDPE 4) is the most common packaging used in coffee and there are recycled options here with low emissions through the production process (as we have been using) but the issue comes when we look at the end of life or recyclability of the product. In Cornwall, the only places you can return this type of plastic for recycling is at the supermarket. Nationally, the stats say less than 5% of LDPE packaging actually gets recycled. It’s not great reading.

Then we have the rise of rice paper, which is usually given credibility because it’s compostable and doesn’t come from fossil fuels. Whilst those merits are true, we know there is little separation of these ‘compostable’ materials when they’re thrown away. Part of the problem of course is being able to identify and sort a myriad of different unsegregated waste.

When composting streams become contaminated with items that aren't compostable, the impact is severe. For waste management companies, the risk is too high. The safer, lower-risk option is to bypass composting entirely and send the contaminated waste straight to landfill or incineration instead. As a business, we’ve always said we take responsibility - if research suggests the compostable certification doesn’t get the results we’re expecting then we should take a stance on it and take another direction.