Podback has inked a deal with waste management firm FCC Environment to roll out coffee pod recycling across household waste recycling centres (HWRCs) in England and Wales.
It follows a pilot of coffee pod recycling at 11 FCC HWRC sites in Suffolk, operated on behalf of Suffolk County Council, and two in Berkshire.
Podback says in the first six months of operations at the Berkshire sites 14 tonnes of pods were collected, “showing a clear consumer demand for the service”.
The rollout of the service is already in progress, with sites across Wigan and Luton due to launch in early July.
As part of the rollout, Podback will provide the recycling centres with containers and signage and will manage collection and logistics of material to UK-based reprocessors. It will also support each local authority to launch and promote the new service to residents.
Podback is a not-for-profit organisation created by some of the biggest names in coffee pod systems, including Nespresso and Nescafé.
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Customers across the UK can recycle their used pods through its network of drop-off points in retail stores, at local authority recycling centres as well as Yodel collection locations.
In October last year, it was revealed more than one million households are able to have their coffee pods recycled under a kerbside recycling scheme from Podback.
Executive director Rick Hindley said: “Our pilots over the last year with FCC have proved successful and have received positive feedback from residents using the service.
“We hope offering people another option to recycle their used pods will help to make recycling even more convenient and accessible and increase rates of recycling overall in these new locations. We have an active pipeline for local authority wanting to include Podback at their recycling centres and look forward to announcing more soon.”
