Reground Best Practice Guide for soft plastic packaging
At Reground, their origin in the coffee industry combined with years of experience in waste reduction and recycling have put them in a pretty unique position: they’re in direct, every-day contact with the waste issues that businesses face and they’re able to do something about them!
Reground got involved in soft plastic recycling after the data they gathered in waste audits showed that (after organic waste) soft plastic was the next biggest recyclable material that was being sent to landfill. As always for them, the first step was to find ways to reduce and avoid creating plastic waste – but where it couldn’t be avoided, they set out to recycle it.
By adding soft plastic to the ground coffee collection service they had already set up, they were able to divert a massive amount away from landfill very efficiently.
As time went on and the mountains of soft plastic they had recycled grew and grew (over 150 tonnes, at last count) they got more and more acquainted with the unique challenges of recycling soft plastic.
They found that people really wanted to do the right thing and choose the most sustainable materials but didn’t have enough information to help them make these decisions, so they designed a project to connect the dots between the coffee industry, packaging manufacturers and recyclers.
Through extensive consultation and testing, they developed a resource that would support the industry to increase and improve recycling: Best Practice Guide to sustainable soft plastic coffee packaging.
