We have always taken a holistic approach when thinking about where our products come from and where they end up; the end-of-life of everything we produce requires consideration. Our duty as coffee roasters is to produce the best possible product we can for our customers, but our duty also extends to do as little damage to the environment as is possible. And this has always been the reason behind our decision to use paper stream recyclable packaging for our coffee packaging.
We all know the recycling system in the UK is complex and difficult to navigate both as an individual and as a business, where the rules around what can and cannot be recycled change county to county. This makes choosing the right material for our coffee a difficult decision, one without a right or wrong answer. When deciding on a material we not only have to consider the material and its end-of-life but also the properties of the material and how they impact on coffee quality. Up until now we have chosen to prioritise the widespread recyclability of our packaging over the materials ability to protect the coffee from oxygen - which is known to reduce quality, but is recyclable country-wide.
Though we have been happy to accept the compromise between quality and recyclability we recognise the impact on our wholesale customers, who display our retail bags for up to a few weeks at a time. Our commitment to delivering the best possible product means reconsidering our choices and sometimes changing our minds.
As of this week our wholesale customers will receive our new LDPE 4 packaging for all coffee products, kilogram and retail bags. This decision has not come lightly, after receiving a lot of feedback from our wholesale customers who shared concerns over the bags durability and coffee quality. The new bags provide the best possible oxygen barrier to the coffee and are resealable, where our previous bags were not. Wholesale customers can be confident that the coffee sitting on their shelves will not degrade so quickly and the bags themselves will arrive more intact than our previous paper bags.
LDPE 4 packaging is a type of soft plastic and is very common in food packaging, but up until very recently was not widely recycled by local councils or was not collected by waste collection companies. However in Cornwall, where the majority of our wholesale customers exist, LDPE 4 is now collected and recycled by the major waste collection companies. For home consumers LDPE 4 is still not curbside recyclable, but is accepted at local recycling points and dedicated soft plastics deposit points. On the base of the bags is a QR code which will take customers to the Recycling Locator website, where they can find the closest deposit point. It is not a perfect system, but neither is the recycling system in the UK at this time. We will continue to monitor both the materials available to us and the recycling landscape in Cornwall and the UK and adjust our approach to find the best solution possible.
We believe that coffee and business can be a force for positive change. That’s why we’re here. We want to be part of a better place and run a good business that puts honesty and social responsibility before profit.
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