Of coffee pods and recycling

My coffee machine died

I loved my coffee machine, it was a “bean to cup” filter coffee maker that would grind the beans and give me a nice fresh post of coffee.

I need at least 3 coffee’s in the morning before I can start my day. And when my machine went wrong I was gutted as I had to have instant stuff, I have a tin of Millicano coffee and even though they claim it tastes like barista coffee, it doesn’t, it really doesn’t.
I can’t grumble I guess I had my coffee maker a few years and it served me well so time to look for another one.

Pod machines

Years ago I had a coffee pod machine, a Tassimo but my then wife guilt tripped me into getting rid off it because of the damage the empty pods were doing to the environment by just being dumped in ladfill. I loved the coffee from that machine, it made a really nice cup.

So I decided to look again at pod machines but first I see if they had changed over the years and now recycling was an issue.

They have become greener

Yes! they have changed, now you can get aluminium pods which are completely recyclable, not all pods are aluminium though some are still plastic but there is some good news there as well.

Costa, my favourite coffee have a pod recycling scheme, just pop into any of their branches and ask for a pod recycling bag, it’s free, take it home, fill it with your empty Costa coffee pods and take it into any Costa branch and they will recycle it for you.

Costa recycling

I got a couple of these bags from my local Costa branch because the coffee pods I currently have are plastic.

You can also get Costa pods in aluminium to save you doing that and they can be put in your domestic recycling.

Competing systems

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The 2 main ones are Nespresso and Dolce Gusto.

Nespresso has by far the greater choice of flavours and styles of coffee and other drinks that come in aluminium capsules but their machines are quite expensive and only Nespresso pods will work in them.

Dolce Gusto has a smaller choice of flavours and styles of coffees and other drink and a very limited choice of aluminium pods, their machines are a lot cheaper. However by the use of a 3rd party pod adaptor you can use Nespresso pods in a Dolce Gusto machine which opens up your choice of recyclable pods enormously. I also discovered if you put a tea bag in the adapter it makes a decent cup of tea as well.

I went for the Dolce Gusto system and the Krups Piccolo XS machine.

Plastic pods

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Some coffees I can only get it plastic pods which can be recycled depending on your local councils recycling scheme, in my case, yes they will take plastics for recycling in their domestic recycling collections.

If your local authority doesn’t then there is the PODBACK system where you get a back from a participating shop like Waitrose or when your order coffee from the Dolce Gusto website and you fill it with empty plastic pods, seal it, take it to to your local collect+ point and they send it of to PODBACK for recycling, this is a free service.

No Guilt

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So now I can enjoy my coffee guilt free about my empty pods filling up landfill, they’ll all be recycled.