If you’re here reading this you probably know that we’re a coffee roastery in the UK’s South West, tucked away on the edge of Dartmoor National Park.
Over the past few years, we’ve won some huge awards for our coffee, culminating in winning 50% of the highest awards in the Great Taste ‘Espresso’ category in 2019. But, like most roasters in the world, we’d been using single-use plastic packaging. We knew this needed to change. The problem was finding readily compostable packaging that also preserves the taste of our award-winning coffees.
A year of research and meticulous trial and error led us to a discovery – packaging made from sustainable plants, that uses less energy to produce, that is easy to compost and once composted improves the soil.
It’s the holy grail of packaging and it’s here.
Over the past few years we’ve rolled out our compostable bags across all Voyager packaging – commercial or wholesale compostable packaging and retail compostable packaging – if you’ve tried our coffee you’ve probably seen these grey and white bags! They’re made from plant starches and after use, the resulting compost will help grow more plants.
To add to the excitement we’re also composting the used bags we can collect from our coffee house and restaurant partners right here at The Roastery on the edge of Dartmoor National Park. This is to help develop a circular packaging solution to the coffee industry’s current crisis.
If you ever see our coffee in brown paper coloured bags, these are compostable as well. We do this when we’re trying different versions of our bag, iterating all the time to find bags that compost even quicker. It’s important to note that ALL the bags, labels, boxes, and tape we use are made from 100% plants. The only difference is at a molecular level. We’re constantly experimenting to improve the durability of the packaging while also working on bags that compost in the most environments as possible.
These bags are 100% made from plants, a renewable source.
Specific plants – corn, sugar cane and beets – produce starches.
The starches convert into poly-lactic acid through milling, hydrolysis, and fermentation.
After use, this bag can be hot-composted, breaking down quickly in any ‘healthy’ compost bin.
This material has a far smaller carbon footprint than traditional packaging production.
The resulting compost is a great soil improver helping to grow more plants!
We need you. We need like-minded individuals, baristas, cafe-owners, business-owners, flat-white drinkers, and home-brewers to come together, support and promote a culture of compostable packaging as an ‘expectation’, not a luxury.
A large proportion of independent or specialty coffee houses have either promoted and rewarded the use of reusable takeaway cups or they’ve opted for compostable single-use ones. Aside from the big chains, we’ve come so far on this front. However, as it stands only a persistent few think about the packaging behind the coffee they’re buying – both for home use and the packaging behind the coffees they buy at their favourite coffee haunt.
You can change that.
You can buy great coffee in compostable packaging.
You can start a conversation with your local barista about using compostable packaging. Just ask for more information.