Are Custom Coffee Bags Recyclable?

Custom Coffee Bags are the bags custom made with Size, style, material and printing.

Custom Coffee Bag Size: When you walking in the super market, you can see coffee bag sizes from 50g to 10kg. The most common sizes are 250g, 500g and 1kg.

When you custom your coffee bag, you will first make a decision what is the weight you want to pack. And even for the same weight, different roasters will have different preference on the bag size, some prefer wilder, some prefer taller.

Custom Coffee Bag Style: There are many bag styles for coffee bags; such as stand up pouch, flat pouch, side gusset bag, quad side seal bag, and flat bottom pouch.

You will need to make a decision what kind of the bag style you need.

Besides the style, you will also need to make a selection whether you need zipper, and what kind of zipper it will be. And Tin tie if needed.

Custom Coffee Bag Material: There are so many different materials for coffee bags. And the material structures for different layers are so different for each roaster. So you will choose the most suitable materials for your coffee beans.

The most comer materials using are as below:

For some of the roasters they need lower cost, transparent, and less barrier function. They can choose OPP/PE, or PET/PE

For some other roasters they need high barrier with lower cost. They can choose PET/VMPET/PE, or OPP/VMPET/PE. The barrier function is good, while not that high cost.

For some roasters they need highest barrier. They can choose PET/foil/PE, or OPP/foil/PE. This material structure can be with the highest barrier in both OTR and WVTR, and the coffee beans can on shelf for a very long time without losing quality.

But all above are traditional materials. Where there is PET, VMPET, foil in the coffee bag materials. These are not recyclable.

Actually barrier function is very important for coffee bags. We will need that to keep the coffee bean quality on shelf.

Thanks to the new technology development, there are now new materials that can with high barrier function while no need to use PET and foil. Below are the market trends:

PE/PE

High barrier coating PE/PE

OPP/metalized PE/PE

PE/metalized PE/PE

There are some people using PE/PE/EVOH and called it recyclable, but actually it is not. EVOH and PE are not very easily recycled. This is the solution when people don’t want to use PET and foil while need high barrier function. As the technology of high barrier coating PE or metalized PE is not mature, they have to use EVOH as alternative. But when the high barrier coating PE and metalized PE quality are good, I think it is time to stop using EVOH.