New York teams with Nespresso, Sims to recycle aluminum coffee capsules

The New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) has partnered with Nespresso, headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Sims Municipal Recycling, Brooklyn, New York, to encourage New Yorkers to recycle Nespresso coffee capsules and other lightweight aluminum items through the city’s curbside program. New Yorkers can recycle all small aluminum products in the same recycling bin as plastic, glass and other materials as a result of this partnership, Nespresso reports in a news release on the partnership.

Earlier in 2019, Nespresso committed $1.2 million to improve the recovery of small aluminum and to better allow for curbside recycling of its coffee capsules in New York City. In most cities, the size and weight of the coffee capsules require that they be divided from other recyclables using special equipment. However, with Nespresso’s funding, Sims Municipal Recycling purchased new technology to better sort and capture these aluminum capsules, Nespresso reports.

“Nespresso made a $1.2 million commitment to better enable the recovery of its aluminum coffee capsules through New York City’s curbside recycling program,” says Tom Outerbridge, general manager at Sims Municipal Recycling.

Outerbridge says the funding from Nespresso helped Sims to purchase and install a new processing system for small nonferrous objects recovered from curbside recyclables. The system includes a shredder, an eddy current and an associated hopper, bunkers, conveyors and manual quality control stations. “In addition to Nespresso coffee capsules, with this new system, we are able to better capture an array of other small and lightweight aluminum, such as the aluminum wrapping on bottlenecks, and produce a pure aluminum stream,” he adds.

During the recycling process, Outerbridge says the coffee grounds in the capsules are disposed of as residue. He notes that the coffee grounds are liberated from the capsules by shredding and agitation. He adds that the company is marketing the aluminum recovered from the capsules along with other recovered small aluminum and not with the normal material recovery facility (MRF) beverage can stream.

Nespresso offers its own store take-back program. Outerbridge says this program is integrated with the New York City Department of Sanitation curbside recycling program. Sims will be handling the capsules that come through the curbside program.

“We make our capsules from aluminum because it’s a fully recyclable metal, and it is an excellent material for preserving the quality of our coffee,” says Guillaume Le Cunff, president and CEO of Nespresso USA. “We are constantly innovating to make recycling easier for Nespresso customers and to contribute new solutions to all recycling challenges, and we’re excited to help improve recovery in New York City and lessen the amount of all kinds of aluminum in our landfills today.”

The partnership supports New York City’s Zero Waste initiative, Nespresso says. It has the potential to reduce about 43,000 tons of aluminum foil and other mixed metals that currently end up in landfills each year.

“We encourage New Yorkers to recycle their aluminum coffee capsules and other lightweight aluminum items, like foil and can lids, with their other recyclables,” says Kathryn Garcia, commissioner of the New York City Department of Sanitation.

Before moving forward with this partnership, Outerbridge says Sims had to determine how the capsules behave at its MRFs, which material fractions they would flow with, how they behave at the company’s glass plant and determine this for each type of Nespresso capsule.

“We performed several different shredder tests to determine the right size and configuration and tests on separation of the shredded nonferrous to confirm aluminum quality,” he says.

“Our glass plant processes more than 11,000 tons of materials per month, and we’re excited to see that number increase due to our collaboration with Nespresso and DSNY,” Outerbridge adds. “The materials that are recovered in our facility are sold to manufacturers, which allows them to be turned into new products.”

In addition, Nespresso says its existing recycling program in the United States, in partnership with UPS, will continue to be made available across the country. Consumers can bring bags with used coffee capsules to one of 88,000 UPS drop-off locations or to one of 500 collection points in Nespresso Boutiques and select retailers around the country.