Circular Drive: Podback arrives at one million household coffee pods recycling milestone

The UK's cross-industry coffee pod recycling scheme, Podback, has reached an important milestone, with more than one million households now able to recycle their used coffee pods from the kerbside. With two new local authorities joining Podback this month, a total of 1,078,600 households across 16 UK local authorities can now recycle their used aluminium and plastic coffee pods alongside other household waste and recycling.

Podback's latest partner is the London Borough of Havering, which has become the second London authority to offer residents a kerbside recycling service for coffee pods. Earlier this month, East Ayrshire Council became Podback's first local authority partner in Scotland. The response from residents has been excellent, with over 1,200 households already registered for kerbside collections in the first two weeks.

The Executive Director of Podback, Rick Hindley, exclaimed: "In a little over two years since Podback's launch, we have made significant progress in our journey to ensure that every coffee pod enjoyed is recycled. This month marks another exciting milestone, with over 1 million households across the UK now able to use our kerbside service."

Podback was launched in April 2021 by Nestlé and Jacobs Douwe Egberts UK, the two biggest players in the UK coffee industry. It now works with more than 20 brands, including Nespresso, NESCAFE Dolce Gusto, Tassimo, L'OR, and Aldi, to provide a single scheme for recycling used plastic and aluminium pods. A recent survey conducted by Podback revealed that most (57%) consumers would consider switching to a coffee pod brand offering a free recycling service.

Karen Watson from Cheltenham Borough Council asserted: "We are proud to have been one of the first local authorities to partner with Podback back in April 2021. Our residents have loved how easy it is for them to recycle their coffee pods alongside their everyday household recycling, and our elected members have also been impressed by the service."

Podback is set to launch three more local authority partnerships before the end of November, which will mean that over 1.3 million households will have access to the service by the end of the year. All coffee pods collected are reprocessed in the UK at Podback's reprocessing partners. Used aluminium pods are used in the manufacture of new products such as beverage cans, while used plastic coffee pods are turned into other plastic items such as supermarket crates and furniture. The used coffee grounds are processed through anaerobic digestion to produce biogas and soil improvers.