WAIĀKEA HAWAIIAN VOLCANIC COFFEE

100% Recyclable Coffee Bags

Waiākea is proud to offer a 100% recyclable coffee bag. Created from a single material that can be easily recycled and made into a new product. Recycling can become confusing with varying rules and regulations that change depending on state, city, and even neighborhood. To make things easy, we’ve partnered with How2Recycle, a simple recycling solution for Waiākea’s coffee bags that ensures each bag is given a second life. 

How To Recycle Your Coffee Bag

1. After use, make sure all packaging is dry and cleaned of any coffee grounds residue or coffee beans. 
2. Enter your zip code and find a store near you that has convenient drop-off collection bins in stores.
3. While you’re out, you can take the opportunity to drop off your used grocery bags, sandwich bags, dishwasher detergent pouches, and Amazon Prime mailers at these same collection bins. 
4. Check with your local recycling facility, as some areas allow curbside pick-up.
5. If your area does not allow for recycling of your coffee bag, please reach out to our Customer Support Team and we will send you a prepaid label to ship your bags to a recycling facility. 

Thank you for taking action and participating in the closed-loop recycling economy!

 

Did You Know Most Coffee Bags Are Not Recyclable?

Like us, you might be surprised to learn that most coffee bags are not recyclable. In many cases, coffee packaging is made of a multilayer, composite material - meaning paper coated in many microscopic layers of plastic or aluminum.1

Similar to Tetra Pak, this poses a host of issues once your coffee bag enters the waste stream. 

In order to recycle multilayer packaging, the paper has to be separated from the plastic or aluminum. Separating these microscopic layers is rather difficult to do, and few recycling facilities have the infrastructure to do it. In many cases, multilayered materials end up in the landfill because of the complexity of recycling it.

 

‘Compostable’ Is Misleading

Although some coffee bags claim to be biodegradable and compostable, the reality is that most are not 100% biodegradable or compostable. Only about 60% of the material used to make these coffee bags will break down. The remaining 40% will either hang around in your compost for 5-10 years, or would need to be separated and disposed of in a landfill.2  If not separated and disposed of properly, the 40% of non-compostable material will likely contaminate the stream of organic material and negatively impact compost quality.3,4

For further questions about biodegradable products, we recommend individuals refer to the Biodegradable Products Institute, a third-party organization that certifies entire products that meet the US Standard. 

 

Coffee Bags Are Not Made From Recycled Materials…Yet 

At this time, there are unfortunately no manufacturers making quality coffee bags from recycled materials. We believe that a next, necessary step for the coffee industry as a whole is to offer packaging that repurposes material and gives it a second life, without sacrificing freshness or quality. We not only mitigate the flow of waste into landfills, but also minimize the use of new materials, significantly reducing the energy and carbon emissions involved in manufacturing packaging by making use of materials already in our supply chain.