Recyclable Coffee Capsule System

Optima (filling equipment) partnered with Santis (coffee capsule) and Wipf (lidding material) to develop this system.

This development means that the partner companies are promoting a sustainable recycling economy from production and use, through to recycling of the packaging.

Plastic is a valuable material that whenever possible should be re-integrated into its own production cycle. This was the main aim of the collaboration between Optima, Wipf, and säntis packaging, to develop a fully-recyclable coffee capsule. The result is the integrated GreenLution project, which encompasses more than recyclable coffee capsules. “The concept ranges from the RECY⁺Cap from säntis featuring a polypropylene-based single material capsule, to the fully recyclable WICOGREENLINE top film from Wipf with excellent barrier properties, to being filled on a sustainably designed packaging system by Optima,” explain Ulrich Burkart and Dominik Broellochs from Optima. The packaging system is based on the Optima CFL capsule filling machine and has been adapted to suit the new capsules. The capsule system has been certified as recyclable by the cyclos-HTP institute and the environmental service provider Interseroh, and it is manufactured from polypropylene derived from biological waste.

The Optima CFL combines high filling accuracy for a variety of types of coffee with the most minimal space requirements, optimized film utilization, lower energy and gas consumption with maximum efficiency, and a minimum production reject rate of below 0.05%. “This also means that filling can be made as sustainable as possible,” adds Burkart. Even existing plants can be retrofitted at any time and optimized in terms of their productivity, material utilization and energy consumption. What this development shows is that greater sustainability can only be achieved by working together in partnership with companies along the entire value chain.