Glossary

FOREWORD

There is no company that does not wish to announce its environmental sustainability, an increasingly qualifying aspect in the development of new products and markets. But navigating today's vast selection of sustainable, environmentally friendly, recyclable, refillable, biodegradable and compostable capsules and pods is not easy(see glossary to follow).

Numerous initiatives have been taken by manufacturers to curb the problem of disposing of plastic and aluminum capsules, and they have invested significant resources in a number of areas: collecting returnable empties at the point of sale on their own charge so that they can be disposed of separately; using innovative biodegradable materials that have a low environmental impact because they allow for the reduction of emissions after the product is disposed of; and clearly indicating on the packaging how to separate the various components: the coffee grounds (organic), the cover (aluminum), and the cartridges (plastic).

But there are those 10 billion a year coffee capsules that generate 120 thousand tons of waste, of which about 70 thousand tons are in Europe alone. There are 12 thousand tons of plastic and aluminum capsules disposed of each year in landfills and incinerators in Italy alone(source: European project Life-Pls-4coffee, European Commission).

RECYCLABLE CAPSULES involve a program to recover the materials used to package coffee capsules. This is usually aluminum, which is sent to smelters that turn it into new items. The residual coffee in the capsule is used as compost fertilizer for rice fields. The resulting crop is bought back by aluminum capsule companies and donated to the Food Bank.

RECHARGEABLE CAPSULES provide a possible refill (refill) of ground coffee from the container, which will be disposed of after multiple uses, saving about 85 percent on both the cost of the individual capsule and the amount of waste produced.

BIODEGRADABLE CAPSULES AND ICALS can be thrown directly into the organic waste stream. A biodegradable product is made of materials that over time (from a few weeks to centuries depending on the materials) decompose through the natural action of bacteria and microorganisms, and are then absorbed by the soil.
E.S.E. compostable paper pods disintegrated (correct definition of the biodegradability process) by 90% in less than the 180 days required for the test to be valid.

COMPOSTABLE CAPSULES AND SHIFTS can be used to create compost useful for manuring and fertilizing soils if they are produced from materials that as a result of natural or industrial degradation produce precisely compost. Compostability ensures the absolute lowest environmental impact and allows a product to become part of a new life cycle.

E.S.E. standard paper pods have achieved OK Industrial compostability, passing tests in industrial composting plant.

Basically biodegradable and compostable are two very similar concepts; the difference lies in the time of decomposition. A biodegradable product usually disintegrates by 90% within 6 months, while a compostable product totally disintegrates in less than 3 months.