Why we chose plastic: Daily Grind Vol. 2
You may have noticed the snazzy new bags we rolled out earlier this year. We love the big, bold patterns and bright colours.
Packaging composition is a common ‘coffee table’ chat here at Peoples. And the decision to move to soft plastic material sparked a lot of good conversation within our team.
Throughout the years we have done our best to invest in ways to minimise & mitigate waste while championing our mission to positively impact the lives of small coffee producers.
Our new bags are made from 85% post-consumer recycled material and have a much smaller impact than other plastics - half the fossil fuels of conventional non-recycled plastics. They also use less virgin material than our previous compostable bags. And they can be recycled again at these locations.
Why switch?
We found our previous composting packaging - that we used over the last decade - did not fully compost, especially at home. And the raw materials of compostable are virgin and take a lot of resources carbon wise, and land wise. Large swathes of land are used for mono crops of corn which is the base of most compostable material.
Because most customers cannot fully compost at home the bags, were going into the recycling (clogging up recycling facilities) or in the bin (landfill). We became aware that our compostable packaging had chemicals and plastics that still take a very long time to break down even when their plant components were gone. All other paper-esk coffee packaging has some form of petroleum-based liner or sealer.
And, our mission to improve and champion small coffee producers has led us to be in supermarkets. The reality of this space is shelf life. The new bags give twice the shelf stability of composable.
After years of looking for a solution that would be shelf stable and deal with the issues covered above, the unsexy message of using mostly post-consumer plastic was an honest, while not ideal compromise.
I understand that some of our customers may feel disappointed in this choice. We are open to other solutions as they emerge in the space. It is people like yourself that keep us honest, so thank you again for speaking up about this.
I encourage you to take a deeper dive into our packaging, and our doors (and emails) are always open for a chat.
-Matt
Founder & Managing Director
