Kate Monteiro – Head of Global Sustainability
I’m not sure if it’s my curiosity or my restlessness that has drawn me into so many different roles over the years. Whatever it is, many of the jobs I’ve had have been in a service industry of one form or another. My first job was in the summer, scooping ice cream in my small hometown in upstate New York. I’ve worked in restaurants, I’ve worked for consultants, and, of course, for an importer.
I feel confident saying that any service industry hates risk. Don’t put glass cups above an ice maker. Evaluate a sample of the coffee before it gets on the boat and then again when it lands.
“After all, most of us hold in highest regard the producers that put so much labor into growing, harvesting and processing some of the best coffees in the world. It is an understandable and defendable instinct to want to protect their investment (and ours, and our customers, and theirs…) in whatever practical way is available to us.”
Avoiding risk is no different when we think about transporting and storing high-scoring specialty coffees. Today’s current process puts a plastic bag inside our tried-and-true jute or sisal bags. This plastic is typically made of several layers of different polymers adhered to one another, and all but fully mitigates risk in transit. Protection from rain, protection from pests, swings in relative humidity, oxygen. It also reduces supply risk if you, say, suddenly find you have way more coffee than you need and must sit on it for a while. They can also reduce the smaller, but not nonexistent, risk of waste in transit. Hole in the shipping container, salt water everywhere? No problem. For other agricultural products, these bags have ushered in nothing short of a new era of delivering and storing grains to those in the farthest flung areas of the globe. The benefits can be significant. The coffee is protected and sold and consumed. And with these bags being so very inexpensive, we don’t have to spend any time evaluating which coffees may have more risk than others. Wrap them all. Let’s move on.
But what else is happening here?
Over the last several generations, communities around the world have been designed to, in some cases almost literally, sweep any downsides to these processes under our communal rug. For many of us, if you have plastic bags in your roastery or in your home, someone comes and takes them away with the rest of your garbage. Out of sight, out of mind. There is little, if any, financial disincentive. And there is little, if any, social disincentive, especially from an industry that for a generation has profited from the benefits. After all, most of us hold in highest regard the producers that put so much labor into growing, harvesting and processing some of the best coffees in the world. It is an understandable and defendable instinct to want to protect their investment (and ours, and our customers, and theirs…) in whatever practical way is available to us.
“Despite all of these advancements, the headwinds of practicality remain: separating and collecting the bags, storage, shipment to a central point, shipment to a recycling point. Cost. And the emissions tied around every step along that path.”
And yet the waste from this process, the millions of 65kg bags we use and dispose each and every single year, remains stubbornly hard to reuse or recycle. There is little to no incentive to creating reuse opportunities and these bags, while great, have coffee residue in them and if the coffee was sampled, they have holes as well. Organizations have looked into cleaning the bags for reuse and you can find various guidance online, but the idea generally falls apart against the financial and operational realities. It is much, much more expensive to attempt a food-safe reuse program. Buying a new bag is so cost effective.
As for recycling, the technology and infrastructure needed to process these materials remains a combination of expensive and rare that prevents it from being widely available in most municipalities. We should in no way discount the great strides that people have made in this space. Private company Terracycle has a presence in multiple countries to recycle difficult materials, and public/private partnerships continue to grapple with the issue. Grainpro and Neumann USA launched a partnership collecting these materials at two Continental Terminals locations in the US, which has diverted bags from traditional waste streams. Meanwhile in the UK, organizations like Greenback Advanced Plastic Recycling continue to innovate on processes and technology to make the recycling of these plastic films more accessible.
Despite all of these advancements, the headwinds of practicality remain: separating and collecting the bags, storage, shipment to a central point, shipment to a recycling point. Cost. And the emissions tied around every step along that path.
Is there anything on the horizon for further incentives or disincentives? Yes, but they are slow in coming. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is an environmental policy approach that shifts the financial and physical responsibility for a product’s end-of-life management (like recycling and disposal) from local governments and taxpayers to the producers: the brands, manufacturers, or importers who put the products on the market. EPR regulations would mandate that businesses, not taxpayers, bear the financial and operational responsibility for the end-of-life management of packaging and products. These laws, currently in US states like California, Oregon, and Colorado, require producers to join a Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO), pay fees based on material volume, and meet strict recycling or reduction targets by 2032. Meanwhile in the UK, the new Packaging EPR (pEPR) framework became law in early 2026, which could significantly increase the financial burden on large producers. And in the EU, pEPR is transitioning from a “Directive” (which allowed country-specific rules) to a “Regulation” (PPWR), which applies identically across all 27 member states. Producers must register and pay fees in every single EU country where they sell products.
All of these solutions are important, and all of them move the needle. We absolutely need a multi-faceted approach to reduce the materials going to landfill and the emissions we’re generating from these materials. But at Falcon, the issue of our plastic waste has left us with a nagging question for years. This process is far from perfect.
Can we do better? How?
…Stay tuned for the second instalment.