45recyclinginternational.com | May/June | 2020
laments Guillaume Le Cunff, ceo of
Nespresso USA. At the close of 2019,
he invested EUR 1 million in enhanc-
ing New York City’s recycling infra-
structure, including kerbside collec-
tion services at hotspots. This new
partnership with the city authorities
and Sims Municipal Recycling ‘has the
potential to reduce the 40 000 tonnes
of mixed metals – on top of our coffee
capsules – that currently end up in
local landfills each year’.
The recovered aluminium goes to
smelters to enable the production of
automotive parts, pens, knives or bev-
erage cans. And the list is still growing.
Riding a Re:CyCle
Eager to showcase creative possibili-
ties for recycled coffee capsules,
Nespresso came up with a new ‘state-
ment piece’, the limited edition city
bike. ‘It takes exactly 300 coffee cap-
sules to create the frame of the
Re:Cycle,’ reveals Jimmy Östholm,
who designed the bicycle. ‘The great-
est technical challenge was finding a
way to convert the lightweight alumin-
ium into a material rigid enough to
meet bicycle manufacturing safety
standards,’ says the entrepreneur, who
previously created products for big
companies including Ikea. ‘It wasn’t
rocket science. It just took some time
to get it right – over a year and a half.’
The prototype series, totalling a thou-
sand bikes, was made with the help of
bicycle manufacturer Vélosophy and
two recovery sites near Geneva. Here,
the aluminium content is separated
for recycling and the coffee grounds
mixed with organic matter to make
compost and biogas. Upwards of 300
000 discarded coffee capsules have
been processed by Nespresso’s recy-
cling partners so far.
Östholm hopes the Re:Cycle project
will inspire more people to participate
in the niche take-back scheme. He
adds: ‘I think many consumers are
interested in knowing where their
materials come from. At the moment
there is simply less awareness about
aluminium compared to, say, plastic
waste.’ He wonders whether or not a
bicycle can single-handedly change
people’s perception of sustainability.
‘Maybe not. But it’s a start.’
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44-45_nespressorecycling.indd 45 15-04-20 15:29
