Nespresso turns small businesses in NZ into aluminium coffee capsule collection centres

Nespresso, the ionic brand name of Nestlé Nespresso S.A., which presents exotic coffee flavours in aluminium-made coffee capsules, or pods in bar machines, has taken sustainability to a whole new level. Since its first aluminium capsule recycling programme started in New Zealand way back in 2011, the brand has come a long way to expand it on a wider scale.

The Swiss firm has joined hands with aluminium products manufacturer Constellium to recycle used coffee capsules. The project, called Second Life, is aimed at integrating sustainability across Nespresso’s value chain by giving the used coffee capsules a new life.

While single-serve coffee pods have grown popular in recent years for their convenience, they have also sparked concern among environmentalists due to the massive amounts of waste they generate. This has encouraged Nespresso to penetrate deeper into the society and rope in smaller business entities to make them recycle more aluminium coffee pods.



A few months back, the Swiss brand started contacting garden centres and florists to ask if they'd become collection points of aluminium coffee pods. Once these businesses gets listed on Nespresso's website, the coffee brand starts supplying them the collection boxes, which each hold 20kg of pods. These boxes are picked up by courier post and sent off to TerraCycle. All the boxes come courier-ready with stickers pasted on them; so they do not cost the small businesses any amount.

TerraCycle is a private U.S. small business headquartered in Trenton, New Jersey. It makes consumer products from pre-consumer and post-consumer waste and by reusing other waste materials.

Nespresso's recycling programme has added momentum to aluminium waste recycling among small-scale businesses, which is sure to gain in popularity down the line.