Podback is a not-for-profit UK-based coffee pod recycling service. Created by major pod manufacturers like Nespresso, Nescafé Dolce Gusto, and Tassimo, it is the first cross-sector scheme that offers a simple way to recycle pods and give them new life as drinks cans or plastic packaging in supermarkets.
Podback offers consumers different ways to recycle pods: UK citizens can take used pods in dedicated bags to a Yodel collection point in a local shop. The bags for this service are available via Podback partner stores Morrisons and Ocado, or consumers can order them directly from the Podback website. Furthermore, there is a specific street collection service available to over 800,000 families in collaboration with 14 local authorities in the UK, including London, Cardiff, and Oxford.
To date, 25 coffee pod brands can be recycled through Podback, which means that the service covers over 80% of the market. Podback is free for consumers and neutral for local authorities: all the costs are met by the manufacturers, without additional charges for municipalities.
While coffee pods are still products that create, through their very existence, a large amount of materials that require end-of-life management and consume large amounts of energy and water in all their phases (even Podback collection bags constitute further plastic to be recycled), the system is notably transparent and all post-use stages take place within the UK. Once they reach recycling centres, Podback bags are sorted for recycling, while the coffee grounds extracted from the pods become compost or biomass to produce renewable energy.
The pods themselves, meanwhile, take one of two routes. Aluminium pods are sent to a processing plant in Tandom, Cheshire, and melted down to make new aluminium products. Plastic pods, on the other hand, are sent to the Bright Green plastic recycling centre in Yorkshire, where they are mixed with other plastic packaging, shredded, washed, and, finally, crushed to form plastic pellets, which are then used to make a variety of new products, from garden furniture to plastic packaging for supermarkets.
Web site:
Sector:
Coffee pod recycling
Pros:
The first free cross-sector scheme for consumers and local authorities
Features:
Service designed to make coffee pod recycling as simple as possible
This article is also available in Italian / Questo articolo è disponibile anche in Italiano
Images: Podback