Nespresso boosts aluminium recycling with rewards in exchange for used coffee pods

To introduce customers to the sustainability concept, Nespresso has announced a Recycling Rewards programme, where any user returning 100 used capsules of any brand would receive special gift items in exchange.

The customers who return the pods will receive one from either of the products quoted below; a notebook made of recycled coffee grounds, a sleeve of Nespresso coffee flavours, and a washable beach towel.

After removing the residual coffee grounds from pods in a recycling centre in New South Wales, the empty pods would travel to a dedicated facility while the coffee waste would transform into the soil for compost or landscaping.

The extracted aluminium would go for the smelting process followed by refining so that the metal can be forged into a varied range of products, from automatic pencils to bicycles.

GM at Nespresso Oceania, Jean-Marc Dragoli, said the initiative is crucial in leading the company’s sustainability strategy forward. He said, “The Recycling Rewards trial is part of a broader strategy which seeks to better understand recycling behaviour, raise awareness of and engagement with our recycling program, and give more aluminium coffee capsules a second life.”

The company also has three additional propagandas that it wishes to uphold gradually; the first one is installing collection points all around the country to encourage customers to put their used aluminium capsules inside for recycling.

Previously, this year, the organisation collaborated with recycling companies like, CurbCyle and IQ Renew to initiate coffee capsule collection units along the kerbside. Surprisingly, the company collected almost two tonnes of recyclable coffee capsules in six months.

The last two points that the company emphasises are; that customers can post back to Nespresso using a special Australia Post Satchel and the building of a recycling chain where the entire workplace or a whole community evolves into a conscious recycling unit.