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Great Article about our Coffee Box in Spurge:
Improving sustainability is an ever-present thought in the specialty coffee industry. Up and down the supply chain, interested parties are reexamining their processes and traditional ways of doing things in order to find enhancements that can reduce coffee’s environmental footprint. One area, though, that can get overlooked is that last leg for many a coffee’s journey: in the shipping materials.
Still, some companies are rethinking what their coffee ships in, particularly those going directly to consumers, and are finding success in limiting the amount of the packaging they ship that end up in a landfill. We spoke with three of those companies to find out what sort of sustainability considerations they made when creating their shipping materials.
Packaging in which coffee normally ships is by and large sustainable; the lion’s share of most coffee shipped to consumers comes packed in a cardboard box. But then there are stickers, tape, etc. that aren’t as recyclable or compostable as the rest of the material. This has led Andy and Nanelle Newbom of Torque Coffee to completely overhaul their entire shipping strategy, ultimately leading the direct-to-consumer subscription-based coffee roaster to create the Coffee Box.
All of the shipping materials that comprise the Coffee Box are 100% recycled, 100% recyclable, and 100% home compostable, and has been steamlined down to just the bare necessities: the box, the shipping label, the inner tissue, and the inner information card. No stickers, no tape.
“On the coffee consumption end of the supply chain all we can do is destroy less. We can’t get to carbon neutral let alone positive,” Andy Newbom tells Sprudge. “We can reduce, reuse and use recycled materials to destroy less. That’s why we made the Torque Coffee Box. To destroy less while enjoying your coffee.”
