At Omar & the Marvellous Coffee Bird, we always strive to provide high-quality products made with care. This ethos extends to our choice of suppliers. Finding the right packaging for our coffee beans and beverages has not been an easy task. The expansion of degradable and recyclable product packaging options in recent years has led to a confusing and saturated market. While searching for packaging solutions, we discovered many conflicts between what suppliers claim and the reality of what councils’ waste and recycling services do. A lack of regulations, and clear standards, makes it hard to know how to make the right choice.

Biodegradable, Compostable, Home-Compostable, Recyclable… Wondering what all the jargon really means? So were we!

Biodegradable

Biodegradable has a very loose definition. It means that a product is capable of being decomposed by bacteria or other living organisms. The definition doesn’t provide a timeline for the process. Though it sounds great, a biodegradable coffee cup could take 20 years to break down and still be true to the definition.

Compostable

Compostable means that a product will break down and be able to be used as compost. The common usage of the term relies on the composting process reaching high temperatures (over 60°C). This rarely occurs in a home compost bin and essentially refers to large-scale commercial composting facilities. 

With many local councils offering green bins, which already go to these composting facilities, consumers were advised to place compostable packaging in their green waste bins. Over the last few years, single-use packaging has been so abundant that composting facilities have stopped accepting compostable packaging. This is due to the unbalanced mix of green waste to packaging found in the green bin collections. The composting facilities need a healthy mix of green waste to maximise the efficiency, and working temperature, of their compost heaps. A healthy mix involves wet and dry items like food scraps, soil, paper etc. The high percentage of compostable packaging just wasn’t breaking down as quickly as advertised.

Home-Compostable

Home-Compostable by contrast does what it says on the box. Although these items often don’t have the slick feel of other packaging, they can break down quickly (within 90 days) in an average home-compost heap. 

Recycling

Recycling is the process of converting waste into reusable material. The concept of recycling is simple, and familiar, and is so ingrained in our society, it may seem silly to need to explain it further. We found out the system is much more complicated than it first seems.

The recycling facilities used by local councils rely on automated systems to sort items into categories; glass, metal, plastic, paper etc. These systems have their strengths and limitations. They can cope with high volumes, but they lack certain abilities, like, for example, the ability to detect certain colours. A 100% recyclable piece of black plastic may be sent to landfill instead of being recycled because the camera sensor in the sorting machine can’t “see” that the black material is recyclable. 

Recycling coffee cups

A coffee cup and lid may both be 100% recyclable, but they have to be separated because the cup and lid are made of two different materials (eg. plastic lid and paper cup). Furthermore, uncleaned material cannot be recycled either. So, coffee cups that are thrown in the recycling bin uncleaned, and/or with the lid still attached, will not be recycled.

One of the companies we spoke to, who are producing 100% paper-based coffee cups, said they’re not allowed to label their product as recyclable because the paper contains <0.075% resin. This resin comes from the natural wood fibres used to make all paper products, most of which are deemed recyclable. 

After speaking with our local council, we found out that the automated systems used at recycling facilities are programmed to completely omit coffee cups regardless of their materiality, cleanliness or whether or not they have a lid.

Our ‘solution’

At Omar's, we’ve decided to source completely home-compostable packaging for both our coffee beans and hot beverages. The coffee bags are made from paper with PLA lining, zips and valves. The coffee cups (proudly made in Australia) are 100% paper-based, as are the lids. Both of these products meet the ‘OK COMPOST HOME’ certification by TÜV AUSTRIA, the industry-standard compostable packaging. We’ve even tested both of these products ourselves at home, in small compost heaps, with satisfying results. 

Neither of these packaging solutions are ideal as they're still, in essence, single-use products. Also, the PLA lining, zips and valves on the coffee bags are slower to break down than the paper bag itself. This is why we also stock reusable Miron glass containers for our coffee beans, and reusable travel flasks for beverages. These items will last a lifetime and are a great way to reduce waste.

We aren’t completely waste-free at Omar’s. We’re not even sure being 100% waste-free is achievable for our business in this convenience-focused industry. One thing we do know is that we’ll keep trying to do our best to minimise our waste.