Do you like to drink coffee in capsules?
You are not alone, this is an easy way, usually cheap and quite tasty to drink coffee that is considered to be better quality usually than the regular coffee sold in writers around the world.
However, it is very possible that the following article will make you avoid doing this or at the very least, start considering other options.
Tomorrow held in the UK by the packaging company Packaging Online found that coffee capsules, i.e. the aluminum capsule and not the coffee inside, are one of the most polluting substances in the world, with the process of disintegrating a single capsule reaching 500 years.
The company examined the different types of capsules to find out which ones degrade easily and which ones degrade more slowly and are a hazard over a longer period of time.
Tests show that glass materials, for example, are the slowest type of packaging when it comes to wear and tear, over an average of a million years.
However, most of the glass in the world is recycled then in terms of damage, it is more limited.
When it comes to capsules the problem is bigger even though it is a "short" expiration time of 500 years on average.
The aluminum and plastic, from which the capsules are made, are difficult to separate for recycling and this is a step that is mainly inefficient on the economic side, which makes it a real global problem because at any given moment, according to research data, tens of thousands of capsules are produced and buried around the world .
When the packaging company examined why the capsules degrade so slowly, it became clear that the reason was that they were manufactured in a very durable way so that they could withstand the high pressure of the coffee-making process in a home-made machine.
In light of this, the recommendation for consumers is to switch to reusable stainless steel capsules, or those made of more consumable materials, but in both cases these are not so accessible, available or convenient recommendations.
It is worth noting that the issue of polluting capsules is not really new, at least not to companies that manufacture capsules, which make every effort to recycle as much as possible both the capsules and the coffee in them.
Two of the leading capsule manufacturers in Israel, Nespresso and Elite, offer consumers the option of returning used capsules at no cost and transferring them to recycling plants.
Coffee becomes a raw material.