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Our reliance on unique coffee capsules is not good for the environment because of the energy needed to grow beans, make capsules, make coffee and dispose of waste. But there is one benefit: Capsules prove to be a more sustainable way to drink espresso than almost any other method of making coffee. And according to new research, recyclable aluminum pods are more environmentally friendly than any other capsule, whether plastic or compostable.
These capsules, whether they come from Nespresso, Lavazza, Ilay, Bosch Tbadimo, Keurig, Nestlé or a host of small businesses, quickly conquered the world; even connoisseurs and many starred restaurants have opted for them.
In the United States alone, sales of pod coffee machines have soared in the last decade, from 1.8 million units in 2008 to 20.7 million in 2018, according to the firm. Euromonitor market research. At present, more than 40% of American households own an espresso machine; in the UK, it's almost a third. Environmental activists have however criticized the rapid adoption of the coffee capsule, criticizing the deluge of waste streams produced by coffee makers. According to research by Halo, a British producer of compostable coffee capsules, about 39,000 of these capsules are manufactured every minute in the world, and up to 29,000 in landfills.
It seems bad for the environment, but that's not all. To understand the environmental impact of coffee consumption, it is important to conduct life-cycle badessment studies of all coffee production methods. Alf Hill, professor of chemical engineering at the University of Bath, examined all stages of coffee production, from bean cultivation to waste disposal, through the badessment of impacts on ecosystems, climate change and water.
His team discovered that instant coffee was the best, but the capsules were the finalists in the environmental impact issues. Filter coffee or drip comes in third, while traditional espresso has the worst impact on the environment. "The impacts, such as greenhouse gas emissions, the use of water and fertilizer, occur mainly where coffee is grown," explains Hill. "Capsules usually need less coffee to be prepared with just one drink. As a result, their overall impact may be less, even if we see more waste when we toss them. "
Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, a barista and co-owner of Bath's specialty coffee, Colonna & Small & # 39; s, who collaborates with researchers, states that "instant coffee extracts a lot of the bean, so consumes less coffee per cup," he added. that it does not necessarily work well on other aspects of sustainability.
Hill's research is consistent with other studies conducted in recent years, which suggest that capsules are less harmful to the environment than other methods of coffee preparation. Besides the environmental impact of growing beans, the second big hit is the energy needed to brew coffee. That's why the espressos made by the barista have so much trouble in terms of environmental footprint: it takes a lot of energy to prepare a small cup of espresso. Capsules, on the other hand, are more effective. Coffee machines heat only the amount of water needed for one serving, as opposed to, for example, boiling a kettle.
Sebastian Humbert, expert in life cycle studies at Quantis, a company that collaborates with many organizations to improve their sustainability, warns that if you take a responsible consumer – not an average consumer – it is then possible to prepare coffee filter with less negative impact than capsules, although slightly. "However, if you are an irresponsible consumer, if your drip filter machine is very inefficient, if you leave it on, if you make more coffee than you need, you can make a filter drip coffee much worse than capsules, "he says.
Colonna-Dashwood says that despite numerous studies showing that drip coffee and espressos are worse for the environment than capsules, the general public just does not notice. People are simply focusing on how capsules kill the planet. "So there's a lot of work to be done to make the capsules more durable – because there is a sales opportunity to make them more durable because people think they're bad – and not because it's a good thing. is actually a really unsustainable way of drinking coffee. It's very ironic, "he says.
A Quantis study compared the consumption of electricity during the preparation, heating and wasting of coffee for the preparation of coffee in single serving and drip. He found that single-serve coffee uses an exact portion of fresh coffee, which reduces coffee waste, while those who brew drip coffee often have leftovers to discard. And espresso machines that sit on a gas cooktop or hot plate consume much more energy than a capsule machine.
A study conducted by the KTH in Stockholm found that the filter coffee had the greatest impact on the environment because cup to cup, filter coffee uses more beans to prepare a single cup – about 7 grams, compared to 5.7 grams for coffee in capsule. Add to that billions of cups of coffee drunk every year in the world and this quickly creates a huge increase in the amount of coffee beans to be grown, harvested, processed and transported, as well as any energy needed to heat the water during manufacturing. the cup.
As Colonna-Dashwood's café is not far from Bath's university, many students and professors attend regularly, and he sometimes talks to them about coffee and the science that underpins it. That's what happened in 2012 when he made a latte for Chris Hendon, a PhD student in chemistry. They began to discuss the impact of water composition on the taste of coffee; the discussion led the couple to co-write an article in the Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry and later a book, Water for coffee.
Last year, Colonna-Dashwood decided to speak again to Bath scientists. He contacted Hill at the Chemical Engineering Department and asked him to determine which capsules are actually the best: aluminum, plastic or compostable. The result, says Colonna-Dashwood, is that aluminum capsules.
However, the bulk of the capsules on the market are plastic, most being manufactured by Lavazza, Nestle, Illy, Nescafe Dolce Gusto, Gold Tbadimo and Keurig K-Cup. Some plastic capsules, such as Nestlé's Nescafé Dolce Gusto plastic, are recyclable. The plastic capsules of the Golden Tbadimo are recyclable but must be deposited in approximately 180 public drop-off locations in the UK. In the United States, K-Cups have an aluminum tray and are partly recyclable: that is, once dismantled, you can recycle aluminum. In Canada, however, K-Cup pods are recyclable at the end of last year and the company plans to manufacture all of its five-polypropylene badays, a widely accepted recyclable material, by the end of this year. 2020, said Keurig spokesman Katie Gilroy.
Since 2010, Nespresso manufactures its own fully recyclable aluminum capsules. However, as in the case of the plastic capsules of Gold, there is a problem: people have to return them to Nespresso to be processed in its own recycling plant. This is because Nespresso capsules are not pure aluminum, which is largely recycled. They have a silicon lining. They therefore need a tailor-made recycling process. Nevertheless, in trying to motivate consumers to be greener, the company even provides free return bags for capsules that you could buy. Alternatively, it is possible to deposit the used capsules in a Nespresso Shop, in any of the 7,500 collection points, including the CollectPlus and Doddle sites, says Crosskey, or request a collection from your home. Currently, the recycling rate is 25%.
In 2017, Nespresso conducted a six-month recycling pilot project with the London Boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea. The company donated 190,000 residents special purple bags to recover their used Nespresso capsules during regular board refresher tours. Similarly, in March 2019, the company began working with the New York City Sanitation Department and Sims Municipal Recycling to improve recycling rates.
According to Colonna-Dashwood, while Nespresso's recycling plant is on top, the hbadle and burden on customers means adoption rates are not as high as they could be. But even with his company's aluminum caps that can be thrown into your usual household recycling bin, every capsule's coffee needs to be emptied first. Realistically, probably few coffee drinkers would be willing to do it regularly, says Piotr Barczak, head of waste policy at the European Environmental Bureau, a network of more than 143 environmental organizations. Consumer behavior plays a role, he says.
"Coffee capsule manufacturers claim that their products are recyclable and they are right. The problem is that they are not well picked up and recycling is complicated, "says Barczak. So, many coffee drinkers do not bother. Refundable deposit fees may encourage more people to return the capsules, but this is not integrated with the Nespresso business model or its competitors.
Still, Colonna-Dashwood believes that if Nespresso and other companies opt for recyclable aluminum capsules, it may be easier to convince consumers to discard coffee waste in home compost and throw the capsule into the recycling. And this, according to his research and that of Hill, would be the best option in terms of environmental footprint – always with the exception of instant coffee, which is best done in all studies of cycle evaluation. life.
It is unlikely, however, that Nespresso decides to remove silicon from its capsules. For the company, bespoke recycling is intellectual property: silicon-containing capsules are patented, they were originally used to prevent competitors from making pods that work in Nespresso machines, although a lawsuit has put an end to this approach. "So if they copied us and got rid of their silicon coating, they would lose what they saw as a competitive advantage. They respect their IP address, "says Colonna-Dashwood. And, he adds, even after a trial, Nespresso machines are designed so that Nespresso capsules fit best.
Humbert agrees that if aluminum capsules are fully and largely recyclable, they would indeed be better for the environment than plastic or compostable capsules. That being said, the latest Quantis study suggests that the production of plastic pods consumes less energy than aluminum ones. Therefore, unless they are further recycled, the plastic capsules could be more efficient.
Recent studies have shown that plastic bags that claimed to be biodegradable were able to hold stores three years after being immersed in the ground or in the ocean – and that the plastic capsules had at least one shelf life as long.
So what about compostable capsules? Colonna-Dashwood and Humbert agree that they're not great. If you throw a compostable capsule in a municipal incineration plant, there is no benefit to it being compostable. "People often think that compost is better by definition, but that's not necessarily the case," says Humbert. Producing the compostable capsule pollutes as much, if not more, than producing a plastic capsule. And if it ends up in a landfill, it will degrade – producing methane that will end up in the atmosphere. "In a landfill, you want things to stay, you want them to be stable. And if you put the capsule in your garden, our experience shows that garden compost is not good enough to degrade it, it will take years, "says Humbert.
Yet companies are experimenting with compostable materials and Lavazza, for example, recently launched its own compostable capsule, called Ricco. Colonna-Dashwood also looks at compostable capsules. "People will continue to work on compostable capsules, and if somebody with a new biopolymer, I'm very open to that," he says. The London-based Sendero Specialty Coffee Company has manufactured compostable capsules from biopolymers such as starch, glucose and lignin, which are found in the bark of wood. "The capsules decompose in six months and can be discarded in the same way as food waste," says Hutan Farbood, co-founder.
There are also other solutions. The Seattle-based start-up Atomo recently launched the "molecular coffee", which completely eliminates the real coffee beans. It is based on scientifically elaborate molecular compounds that are supposed to give you the taste of caffeine in the early morning. "We looked at all the compounds present in coffee at the molecular level – the body, the mouthfeel, the aroma, the color – more than 1,000 compounds in a roasted bean," says the company. To design the aroma and flavor, Atomo uses natural compounds, avoiding "the polysaccharides, oils and proteins found in the insoluble part of coffee," according to Jarret Stopforth, scientific leader of Atomo. He says that the "sustainable and recycled plant materials" of the Atomo product "produce the same effect".
Atomo's research could prove particularly useful in the future, as more and more studies now claim that climate change is making it more difficult for coffee to survive and thrive. Up to 60% of what coffee drinkers consume comes from the Arabica strain, which is very sensitive to the increase in temperature, which affects the physiology of the plant. As the low-lying areas warm up, Arabica ceases to grow. A recent Nature One paper warns that in Ethiopia, where Arabica is mainly grown, 60% of coffee farming will no longer be possible by 2100. Costa researchers Rica have created genetically modified hybrid coffee trees that seem to better withstand extreme weather conditions. changes.
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