According to EcoCaffe's report on coffee drinking, Australians are now consuming between 2.5 and 3 million coffee capsules - enough used pods to fill an Olympic swimming pool - every 14 days.
More than one million Australians put environmentally unfriendly plastic or aluminium coffee pods in their rubbish, two or three times every day.
“It’s an epidemic that has everyday consumers, as well as environmentalists, up in arms,” remarked Michael Scott, managing director of the EcoCaffe Company.
“Coffee lovers are torn between a great tasting at-home coffee experience on the one hand, and creating mountains of rubbish on the other hand. Aluminium and plastic coffee capsules are clogging up our landfill on a daily basis with some of them taking more than 500 years to biodegrade, if at all.”
EcoCaffe has just launched the Ethical Coffee Company’s range of 100% biodegradable coffee pods for Nespresso machines in Australia. The pods are available online and in a limited retail store trial in Australia from 23 November 2014 to coincide with World Espresso Day.
These coffee pods are made from vegetable fibre and starch, enabling the capsules to biodegrade after use within six months. They were developed by the Ethical Coffee Company after nearly a decade of research and development. According to the company, the entire capsule is made of 100% bio-sourced plant-based materials - the main pod, a cover and a double membrane made of biodegradable material, covered in a paper filter. The membrane is sprayed with a very fine coating that resembles aluminium in appearance. This substance is not aluminium and is totally biodegradable. There are no metallic properties or substrates in the capsules.
The Ethical Coffee Company coffees have been thoroughly tested and certified to the stringent standards of EN13432. This is the reference for the official standard that tests and proves the biodegradable nature of packaging or products. The whole capsule, and its packaging components, comply with the European EN13432 standard, currently the strictest available in terms of biodegradability for industrial compost.
“It would have been so much easier to imitate our competitors and use polluting materials such as plastics or aluminium. We prefer to make an ethical choice by selecting a natural, biodegradable material. The issue of coffee capsules is a tiny drop in the ocean of waste management issues, however, it is our intent that our environmentally-friendly choices will be imitated in all industries that generate waste and pollution,” the Swiss company states in its business philosophy.
EcoCaffe is a fully owned Australian company and has the exclusive distribution rights for Ethical Coffee Company products in Australia.
