In my previous career I worked in design and branding, so I know firsthand the impact a brand can have on first impressions. I wanted my packaging to offer a more clear representation of Swelter’s mission to support women producers, and to reflect more of the vibrant energy found in the cultures that produce coffee.
Key elements the packaging needed to address:
- Brand awareness — Convey the mission behind Swelter coffee.
- Function — Lots of our customers are direct (vs. retail), so it needs to be easy to ship.
- Sustainability — Reflect my goal to have minimal impact on the planet (this one was VERY tricky to navigate as I learned more and more about “sustainable” packaging…).
- Stand out — For customers who do sell in retail locations, I wanted Swelter bags to pop on the shelf.
- Convenience — As much as I want customers to transfer beans to an airtight container, I know many people use the bag for the extent of the coffee consumption. So a reseal feature was key to help.
Packaging Research
With sustainability as a focus, I wanted to understand the material options and their upstream/downstream impacts. My first assumption was that compostable packaging would be the most environmentally friendly way to go. With compostable packaging, the idea is that the material will return to the earth, where it started… right? However, I’ve learned that’s not always the case.
There are many factors needed to ensure that material will make it back into the earth in the way it's intended, and those factors are far from being reliable. First, compostable packaging needs to go into a compost waste stream, not landfill, to break down. When less than 4% of the U.S. population has access to municipal composting services, chances are low from the start. Then, most coffee packaging requires bioplastic materials for the value and reseal closure. Bioplastics need special facilities in order to break down, which adds another hurdle. Even PLA, the most “universal” (one could argue) of bioplastics, needs special facilities to avoid turning into micro-plastic pollution. Additionally, compostable waste going into landfill is actually a huge problem as it causes methane gas that is way more polluting than other GHG emissions - so at all cost, I am trying to avoid any organic waste from going into landfills!
Compostable packaging, specifically bioplastic, can be more energy intensive to create and have other negative lifecycle effects if not disposed of properly. So in terms of an overall footprint, it would still be greater than traditional petroleum-based plastic (frustration rising).
Another key aspect I learned is that within composting facilities, compostable packaging actually does degrade the quality of compost produced — and some municipalities are beginning to not accept compostable packaging all together. So, as much as I really wanted compostable packaging to be the solution, I don’t think our infrastructure is there yet.
After being disappointed and frustrated in my exploration of compostable packaging, I started trying to find materials that can be recycled. One option is a box with a plastic bag inside to keep the beans fresh. The benefit here is the box is fully recyclable (bonus: it can be made of post-consumer materials), and the bag uses minimal plastic material (as it can be thinner and basic since it does not need structure or branding on it). However, it still uses plastic… and with the addition of the box, I felt it was a bit wasteful having the two materials. Not to mention the unit price would actually go up for me as a small roaster producing smaller volumes.
So I started to search for plastic bags that could be recycled if they were made of a single-stream material, and that could be made of recycled materials. Finding food-grade plastic with recycled content was challenging, so I moved to a recyclable option. Then the bag design came into factor as I learned that the popular bag structure with the flat bottom is quite wasteful in upstream production, so I opted for a pouch for the 12 oz. packages since manufacturing of the pouch design is a more efficient use of material.
The last key factor I have to manage is volume. As a small coffee roaster, I can’t order high volumes of bags, which makes resources that will work with me more limited than, say, a bigger brand that can order 20,000+ bags at a time.
Solution
I landed on a 12 oz. pouch design, using #4 flexible plastic with an aluminum lining. The aluminum lining gives the branding and design a visual potency I couldn’t achieve otherwise.
Then, I decided to change the 1 lb. bag offering to a 2 lb. bag — since the 1 lb. bag and 12 oz. bag are so close in volume. The 2 lb. bag offers a higher volume with more efficient use of material.
The future
During this process, I came across a paper pouch being developed by EcoEnclose. I was very excited about this option because it offers a solution that is very easily recyclable. I worked with Ecoenclose to do some testing on how these pouches sealed and shipped through the mail. Unfortunately, the pouches didn’t fare so well for my use, being a primarily e-commerce business, so we decided they are not quite ready. However, I’m hopeful in time this product will be refined to be a bit more durable, and be a perfect fit for coffee brand shipping direct to customers! (I also just sampled some coffee after five months in the paper pouch and it was actually still delicious! Acidity and fruitiness are still detectable, even after so much time).
