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New bench made from recycled Nescafé Dolce Gusto pods marks successful kerbside collection trial

group of people near the recycled dolce gusto bench

A new bench has been installed in Sandhurst that was created from recycled Nescafé Dolce Gusto pods.

The bench, on the town’s Yorktown Road, was created by SUEZ recycling and recovery UK, Bracknell Forest Council and Nescafé Dolce Gusto to celebrate the success of a 2017 pod collection trial. Bracknall Forest residents registered their Nescafé Dolce Gusto machines with Nestlé, or signed up via the council, and were given pink bags to store their used coffee pods. These were collected at the kerbside along with rubbish and mixed recycling, this opt-in service ran for a six-month period.

Nestlé is working towards its ambition to make 100% of its packaging either recyclable or reusable by 2025. Nescafé Dolce Gusto pods can be recycled, but developing the infrastructure to make it as easy as possible to recycle remains a key area of focus for the company. This trial aids our vision of the pods becoming a normal part of kerbside recycling.

Coffee pods collected during the trial were sent to Terracycle for processing where they were shredded and separated into plastic and metals. Approximately 1.5 tonnes of plastic was collected from 382 households, this is roughly equivalent to the weight of the average car. The recycled plastic bench was created from some of the material collected, and was unveiled this week.

This kerbside collection trial will help improve subsequent trials and continue progress towards shared recycling goals. For example, water collected in the pods, which created challenges in storing and transporting the materials. Later trials therefore implemented stronger, double sealed bags for collection.

Kim Shaw, Area Manager for SUEZ recycling and recovery UK, commented: “Multi-sector trials like this are an important step towards capturing more materials for recycling and are crucial to meeting our goal of living in a society with no more waste. We are pleased to celebrate the partnership today and to see the coffee pods we collected put to good use back here in Bracknell Forest.”

Warren Plaskett, Marketing Manager at Nescafé Dolce Gusto continued: “Our 2025 ambition shows how important the issue of sustainable packaging is for Nestlé, and this trial is one of the ways that Nescafé Dolce Gusto is working to make our pods better for the environment.”

“This bench is a great and lasting symbol of the success of the project, but we now have more work to do. Feedback has been excellent: we know that more than 90% of the residents who took part in the trial would be keen to participate in a permanent scheme, making that a reality will be our next aim working in partnership with both SUEZ and the council.”