Morrisons partners with Podback on coffee pod recycling scheme

Morrisons has teamed up with Podback on a coffee pod recycling scheme.

Over the coming weeks, shoppers will be able to pick up free Podback Collect+ recycling bags from its customer service desks.

The bags can be filled with used coffee pods at home, then taken to one of 6,500 drop-off points across the UK.

The coffee pod recycling scheme, which was created by Nestlé and rival JDE, launched across the UK last spring.

Through Podback, used aluminium pods are turned into aluminium ingots for new products, such as drinks cans. Used plastic coffee pods are turned into other plastic items, like furniture.

The coffee grounds, meanwhile, go through anaerobic digestion to produce biogas and soil improver.

Morrisons was “the first supermarket to become a supporter of the Podback scheme, as well as provide bags in store”, said Podback executive director Rick Hindley.

Working with retailers was “crucial” to ensuring the scheme was “convenient and simple”, he said.

“We welcome other retailers to join to make it even easier for consumers to recycle pods in the future,” Hindley added.

Morrisons environmental packaging manager Lorraine Wheeler said: “Many of our customers want to brew fresh coffee at home using a coffee pod. But to date, coffee pod recycling has been confusing for consumers, with several different schemes by multiple brands.”

Podback offered “an easy, simple scheme for all of our customers”, she said.

It comes as the retailer has spent recent weeks making concerted efforts to improve its environmental credentials.

In January, it announced that it was scrapping use by dates on its own brand milk in favour of the “sniff test” to save milk from being thrown away.

This week, it switched nine fresh milk SKUs to new carbon neutral Tetra Pak cartons, in what it claimed was a UK supermarket first.

The retailer this month launched new paper-wrapped toilet and kitchen roll lines at “affordable prices” in a bid to tackle plastic waste.