Do you love coffee? Do you want to live a sustainable lifestyle? We give you the opportunity to combine both by providing tips to reduce your waste and by making it easy to recycle.
In the UK, we drink approximately 55 million cups of coffee per day. All that coffee waste can harm the environment if not disposed of correctly. Luckily, there are several ways you can make your coffee drinking more sustainable whether you buy coffee at a café or brew it yourself.
If you buy your coffee at a café, bring your own reusable coffee cup like a Keep Cup or another great brand of reusable cups. Another good way to reduce your waste is to avoid single-use coffee stirrers, sealed sugar packets and mini milk cartons when buying coffee at a café. Lastly, you can ask for drinks to be served in china rather than disposable cups if not taking away.
If you prefer to make coffee yourself at home, you also have ways to improve your java footprint.
Drip coffee machines can be eco-friendly because the filters that are used in the machine are almost always made of biodegradable paper. An added benefit is the ability to make a whole pot from just one filter.
The French press is another sustainable way to brew your own coffee. Simply add some ground coffee and boiling water, allow to sit for a few minutes, and then press the plunger down. You will then have a cup of fresh coffee made without any use of plastics. If you are worried about the bags, we have a Zero Waste Box for those.
If the brewing of your own coffee leaves you with waste that you don’t know how to get rid of properly, TerraCycle has some great opportunities for you to recycle the waste. You can recycle your coffee related waste with one of our free programmes or our Zero Waste Box solution.
Tassimo & L’OR
Together with Tassimo, TerraCycle has created a free recycling programme for Tassimo’s T-DISCs, outer packaging, L’OR capsules, Kenco Eco Refill packs and coffee jar lids. Collection points have been set up at more than 150 public locations across the UK by dedicated volunteers who also run the programme and coordinates the collections.
The volunteers make sure that the collected Tassimo waste is sent to TerraCycle for recycling to raise money for donations to charities. Once the Tassimo packaging has been collected and send to TerraCycle, the Tassimo T-DISCs, foil wraps, L’OR capsules, Kenco Eco Refll packs and coffee jar lids are cleaned and shredded into smaller pieces. This will in turn be melted into pellets that can be remoulded to make new products like park benches and watering cans.
The Tassimo programme is currently at capacity, but to find your nearest public drop-off location please click here.
Coffee Bags Zero Waste Box
TerraCycle offers a wide selection of Zero Waste Boxes that can be purchased in different sizes. These boxes provide an easy and sustainable way for you to recycle different kinds of waste. All you have to do is to choose the Zero Waste Box that fits your recycling needs.
For coffee drinkers we have the Coffee Bags Zero Waste Box. By recycling using this box, you can prevent your coffee related waste from going to landfills by recycling any brand or size of coffee refill bags, jar lids, coffee bean bags and coffee sticks. When the waste has been collected and send to us, we will make sure it gets recycled.
(Click here to see the @tugboatbrews Instagram post)